voting today

"we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in America's story..."

p.s. http://yeswecanholdbabies.wordpress.com/

melissa is coughing for an update, which i think means she really wants to hear what i thought about the mens final diving competition. i don't really remember much two months later, but i remember being conflicted as to whether be super happy that the australian guy came from behind by doing consistently awesome dives, or really sad that the whole country of china was severely let down by one guy who was tens of points ahead thought he had it in the bag. but then i feel a little upset - who are they to assume they have anything in the bag? just because they've won the first 7 medals in the event why should they feel entitled to the 8th? why shouldn't i root for the underdog? BUT they were so close and it would have been so perfect! we had our 8 for 8 and it was fantastic. should we try to take that away from china just because they're so good at so many other things? it was all settled when the camera showed how happy and surprised and thankful and crying and unbelieving the australian guy was. you deserve it, dude!

i am liking minneapolis so far, and while i was a little worried after attending the potluck lunch between sessions of conference on sunday, i loved FHE on monday and am excited to really get into this ward here. i definitely made a mistake not trying harder to make friends and do things with the indianapolis ward. i just spent 3 minutes typing and erasing excuses, but there aren't any really. i was kind of busy missing and visiting my old friends and didn't want new ones. this time however, excepting a trip to harvard yale (I JUST BOUGHT MY TICKET YESTERDAY HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) i am sticking around and trying harder. flag football on saturday woot woot woot woot.


AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

is it true for everybody that there are some people you immediately click with better than others? i don't necessarily mean people that go on to become our dear friends, but rather casual acquaintances* or people you only meet once or twice. i'm thinking specifically of a kid in the indy ward who i sat next to in sunday school and with whom i shared my scriptures since he had forgotten his. we chatted as we went to sacrament meeting and while we didn't exchange phone numbers or fall in love, he was a friendly face and someone who was really easy to talk to, much easier than most of the other people i had met that day. he seemed like he was usually pretty quiet, so i think it may have been a little out of the ordinary for him as well.

it made me wonder why it should be easier to be friends with him than with a different, perhaps more outwardly friendly person. something that's always interested me is thinking about our lives before we came down to earth. i don't know exactly what the official doctrine is, if there is one, regarding our social organization in the pre-mortal life, but i like to think that we had friends and we knew who our family members would be and we spent time with each other. whenever i meet a stranger with whom i click easily or make a connection stronger than normal, i've started to wonder if maybe we were friends before, and maybe this pleasant feeling is our imperfect bodies' attempts to interpret the joy our spirits are feeling as they recognize each other and rejoice at this chance reunion so far from home.

i unfortunately haven't read much of Preach My Gospel, but of the bit i've been through one epiphany hit me wonderfully hard. there was a reference to Romans 8:16, a scripture i hadn't paid attention to before: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." to me this means that the way God speaks to us is by sending His Spirit to talk directly to our spirit. this is the way he communicates truth. this is why people can't be convinced intellectually that some religious teaching is true, even if they are willing or wanting to believe; they have to learn with their spirit and not their brain. and since it's really hard to trust a feeling when you're used to relying on logic to discern truth, many people don't understand how someone can have strong religious convictions without tangible proof, or use different standards to judge religious statements vs. scientific ones. i remember in high school jennifer griffiths shared with our seminary class that someone she talked with accused mormons of explaining everything "with a feeling" as our only proof. sister obrigawitch didn't have an answer, except "well, i guess they're right." i've always been conflicted as to why this was ok, and while at the time i accepted it and moved on, it didn't really click until i read this scripture. spiritual things are communicated through the spirit. when another spirit bears witness to our spirit, we perceive it as a feeling - warm fuzzies when we're with someone we should be with, chills through our body when we hear something inspirational, inexplicable (i've always wanted to use that word!!) tears when a friend shares something special. i like to interpret this scripture to mean that our spirits can communicate on a level that we don't entirely register and that our mortal bodies aren't really able to perceive.

and while i think close friends and family are in a different category - our spirits probably learn from each other and grow to love each other more as we spend time together - i can't imagine we didn't know one another before we came to earth. i like to think that the spirits of my grandchildren keep watch over me, and that they cheer when i do things that are good and when i do things that are wrong they are surrounding me, hollering at me to stop and to make the right choice. in my mind it's kind of like getting really into a tv show...they will yell and jump (like my dad when his team makes a big play) when i'm about to meet my husband for the first time. they'll slap their heads and yowl when i turn the corner too early and just miss him (MY LEAST FAVORITE PART OF ANY PLOT GAH), but that will just make them more excited the next time we are close. being able to guess how my midterm will turn out, they will holler and lament ("no no no no no no no...gahhh!!") when i fall asleep on my physics book, and knowing how much joy it would bring me, they probably had really big smiles on their faces when we bought our piano from the neighbors and moved it into the living room. when they're ready to be born they'll say "see you soon," and when i see them i won't be able to explain with my brain why i love them so much, but my spirit, who has felt their encouragement and love for eons rather than minutes, will finally be able to say thank you.


P.S.! this is closest i've ever seen motab come to kuumba: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8iW9AFr3VY. woooo!

so fresh and so clean clean

<3 mens marathon!! kenyan and ethiopian running 1-2 sharing water bottles at 1 hr 45!

went to a mormon activity, played some volleyball and am feeling better.


EDIT: mouth open at mens diving!!!!!! except...i just realized west coasters won't see it for 3 hours. i will wait until then!!!

raaaauggghhh today is one of those days i really really wish school wasn't over, and that i was home for the summer. i don't want to make new friends. i have friends already, and i just want those.

i'm trying to remember if i felt like this during my first couple of months at harvard, wishing i was just home with nikki and jocelyn and allie and bry. i've forgotten how tiring it is to reach out when there's no one near by to fall back on.

it's like my subconscious knows it's almost september - almost time to pick classes, almost time to decorate my new room, almost time to welcome all the new little freshmen that have no idea what's coming but are really excited and ask questions like "can i bring my blender?" it's the time of summer where i get restless to see my roommates again. i'm excited to go to new york in less than a week(!), but it's going to hurt a little, staying for only 3 days.

the kids here don't seem too excited about the singles branch. it seems like they appreciate indianapolis as a place to live, but there's not any of the enthusiasm of the boston wards. i thought for awhile that i might like staying out here permanently at the end of my first year, but at this moment i can't wait to move to orange county and work close to home.

sparks that started a prairie fire

i love how the olympics inspire me to be so much healthier than i am, but i hate how they make it hard to turn off the tv and get outside. while i would prefer to be watching with my family or my friends, i'm glad people aren't here to see me cry like once an hour at the sappy inspirational athletes commercials or whenever there's an especially nice medal win. talked to hoppy on the phone! need to clean my apartment so i can find my stamps. how didn't i know the women's marathon olympic trials were run back in april in cambridge (on memorial drive!)?

have been running 3 times in the last 3 days! my body is so lazy and slow, but it gets better every day. today i did a run-walk 5k (run the first mile, walk the second, run the last 1.2). the first mile was tough, but the third was awesome, i think because i spent the whole time rehearsing how i would have answered the America's Next Top Model challenge i saw the day before. it's just so tough to tell what tyra's going to like.

"Limitless is your potential. Magnificent is your future, if you will take control of it."

i recently thought of the 100 facts list i made before i went off to college (exactly 2 weeks shy of 4 years ago!) and wondered how many things have changed. many things are the same (i still don't remember moving to or from miami, and surprising people [either way it can be interpreted - i don't remember which was intended] is still my favorite), but a lot of things are different. i haven't bought a new picture frame in years, and i didn't really care when half of my frames broke while packing up my room. i never tried out for drum corps, but i didn't keep my chops up so i didn't even consider it. i save any email from someone i know or that is even a little funny, but gmail was invented and solved all of my email problems. i took the movie stubs from my dresser and put them in a binder which i added to up through this year. senior fall i collected my stubs to put them in, but didn't keep up with it. it's a weird feeling for important things to stop being important to me. i have never thought more about my eating habits than i have this past month and a half, spending so much time with my health nut work friends. i tease them, but i am thankful for their influence. my study habits finally caught up with me, multiple times. it's a tough habit to break, and although i'm trying to improve my work ethic still suffers. it's funny to see that i once wanted to live alone - after living with amazing roommates for 4 years i completely changed my mind. on the nights when i was alone in the quint i would get so scared, i didn't think that i should ever live alone. i'm really liking it now. not loving it, but liking it. i love not caring about clothes (wearing the same ones over and over, or not wearing any at all), and i love trying new things out and the opportunity to experiment with things like cooking and closets. i sleep with the light on half the time, though, and i'm talking to myself out loud about each olympic race.

after a whole year studying blindness and deafness, i still believe i would rather be blind than deaf, but the dilemma is a little worse. the clincher is personality - a blind person can convey their personality, their sense of humor, and their feelings through their voice, while it seems to me that often a deaf person's personality gets lost to most people they meet. while in DC we played matt's "Conversation Game" (real title), which posed the question: if you were blind or deaf but could see (hear) for one hour each week, what would you look at (listen to)? for some reason we only discussed being deaf. i believe i would keep a running list of sounds i read about or am told about, and every week go listen to one or two. the 1812 overature, for example, or ocean waves, my grandparents' voices, the beatles. some weeks would likely be spent listening to quiet noises (i would want to know what sounds one hears when taking the path less traveled by), but i hope i wouldn't view those as a waste.

i'd like to say i've cleansed myself of jealousy, but just this year i spent many nights on my knees praying for help letting go of selfish hurt feelings and to be truly happy for my friends. i've always wanted too much attention, and it's been interesting growing up trying to remain childlike without being childish. i still am not tolerant enough of people who grate my nerves, but i've had some wonderful examples to give me an idea what i'd like to be like. i've had it beat into me from so many extremely different sources that there's never any reason to be mean or unpleasant or disinterested in someone just because of who they are. living in cambridge got me over my fear of homeless people, but i'm still not very good at deciding when to give and when to walk by.

still don't think i've told a boy outloud i like him, in those words exactly. have i? i've definitely made it clear, if not with words, haha.

now instead of being freaked out when people refer to my peers as "men" and "women", i am getting freaked out when my friends and their fiances don't look like men and women, but definitely boys and girls. i love the moment when i realize one of my friends has reached their adult look. it's noticeable and real and awesome.

i still worry about annoying the people around me - i've been able to catch it (i think) with practice, but it's hitting me again now, being around my ifp friends who are very different from the people who i have loved and who have loved me for the past 1, 4, 8, forever years. hearing my friends cuss has lost its shock value (there are small sacrifices one makes by not going to byu), but it always made me smile when kristen would interrupt her angry rants to apologize to me.

cool runnings still makes me cry. oregon trail didn't go away when i went to college.

now that i have my own money i finally bought the only video game i've actually ever wanted (guitar hero!), and i am very happy. melissa said once that she was really going to miss the perfect sense of humor that so many harvard kids have, and i realize now this is something i have always loved. i've only kissed one boy since i wrote my last list. i imagine myself as a "only love" girl rather than a "first love" girl, but i suppose we'll see. you don't have to kiss many boys, as long as one of the few turns out to be the right one. still in love with clean teeth!

i wasn't ready to move away this time, not from harvard and then not from home. i really had set myself up for an awesome summer, and while i am not idiotic enough to turn away a great job landing right in my lap, i went through a period of mourning for the summer that never was. while of course i would love to have been friends with my current friends years and years ago i can't imagine having enough hours in the day to handle being very close to my college, high school, middle school, and forever friends simultaneously. it's taken me a long time, but i've come to accept that maybe some (most?) people are in your life for only a few years or a few months or a few weeks, and that is ok. it hit me first when i had to say goodbye to the wonderful freshmen serving their missions after my sophomore year. these were guys i was "supposed" to spend time with for 3 years, but instead our lives intersected for only 8 months. i was really surprised though, when i had 3 good friends from nerd camp come to harvard my sophomore year - even though two of them were among my 3 best friends in the the program, i almost NEVER saw them at school. i didn't try and they didn't try, and neither of us was sad about it. it was a different world - we were best friends at davis, but not at harvard, and that felt right.

after watching the movie, i believe the narnia quote i was looking for is in prince caspian. need to reread and find out.

i've heard much more *about* boys' emotions since 2004, but they still haven't convinced me 100%. still love cut and paste! brought my colored paper to work today and cut and pasted some ultracentrifuge ideas, explaining to my cubicle buddies that this is the medium in which i work best.

funny, i would love to move back to boston now, even though i might just try to live my college life, and even though there's a real possibility it would not be as fun. sometimes i try to remember what facebook was like back when neha helped me sign up, and it's just amazing. remember when the wall was introduced? and how everyone hated it when the wall format was changed? i still go exclusively to "thefacebook.com", because "facebook.com" used to belong to someone else. i cannot comprehend that zuckerburg left harvard as a sophomore to go change the internet forever.

i still hope that someday after we are dead we have the opportunity to find out exactly how we have affected every person we have met, but i am more scared now of what i will hear than i was before. i get headaches now, but not very often, and i never think to take painkillers for them. i love church more than ever, but it's hard to transition to life without my amazing boston ward. i've had many jobs since 2004 - best one was the mail room!!

i can be serious now without being grumpy! success. getting better at sharing feelings, but not quite there yet. still need to learn how to drum - still on the list!

i had my chance to drink - i was taking out the recycling while alone in my host family's house last summer and noticed that there was a good 3 inches of vodka left in one of the bottles (um, can you recycle vodka?). i felt that this was my now or never moment, and when i left the bottles all on the side of the road i knew i'd never drink alcohol, and i do not believe that i am missing out.

i sleep facing away from my window precisely because i still think the scariest thing in the world is looking out your window and seeing a pair of eye staring in. i still wish i had a brother, although i've had more boy-friends in my life now, and while they aren't quite brothers, i'm a little happier now than i was back then.

harrys 6 & 7 completely made up for #5!! i'm so happy i lived through that. it's strange i didn't really see the appeal of jello in august 04, because starting in september i had red jello with every dinner for 9 straight months. i would go crazy if i didn't have a cell phone now, although the random weeks where i break mine are always well appreciated and pleasant break. there's something wonderful about being unreachable every now and then.




i'm doing well here in indy, although my very best moments have been when i was visiting mormons in dc and spending last weekend with amy and nikki (and PHANTOM!). i've appreciated living alone for the time it allows for thinking, which sounds pretty emo, but i've decided that i want to be able to trust myself much more than i do right now, physically - if for some reason i need to run a mile to get help for someone i want to trust myself to make it there and back no problem, emotionally - i want to trust myself to keep promises i make to myself and to others, if i tell myself something will get done i want to be able to believe that is true (because i don't believe it why should anyone else?), and spiritually - i want to be at a point where if i was to meet my future husband i would be ready for him. how tragic would it be to meet the man of your dreams and to realize you still need 2 years before you're ready to be your adult self? one would hope he would wait, but regardless it's time to grow up.

one of the best things i remember from sacrament meeting in the past few years was one boy who was going to art school for drawing. he said he had lots of people - friends - who would come to his apartment, see his work, and say something like "i wish i could draw!" he said this always makes him mad (what? the congregation snaps their heads up), because he wishes he could draw. he wishes it so bad that he draws every day, hours a day, until does it well. i think about this a lot when i imagine what i want to be like in the future. i wish i could cook, i wish i kept my word, i wish i didn't lose things that are important, i wish i was healthier. i wish these things so badly that there's nothing else to do but get out there and get started.


"you judge one's character by the company you keep, and i'm happy to keep company with you." -mark spitz to michael phelps

summer

reading list
the salmon of doubt

it's about freaking time i finished a book. the point of this list was i was planning to go all kristen tracey and read a book a week for the summer. maybe a book a month is more like it. boo!!!

movie list
27 dresses (twice)
the devil wears prada
the princess diaries
sydney white (2.5 times)
john tucker must die
don't mess with the zohan (boo!)
waking ned devine
pride and prejudice (KK version)
with honors
the graduate
drive me crazy
she's all that
charlotte's web (live action)
the office season 4 (not a movie, but still an accomplishment)

kristen would be proud

neha is a star

listening to a live version of "here comes the sun" on pandora. the crowd was silent during the actual song (i didn't believe it was live until the end), and it made me wonder if george preferred concerts where the audience listened attentively and then cheered loudly after a song was over or concerts where people just screamed the entire time and it was probably hard to actually hear the music. i wonder what paul mccartney is like in real life, whether he can be a normal humble guy, or whether that's even possible if every now and then you can remember that at one time half of the girls in the whole wide world were in love with you.

in my lifetime i have had two stars named after me. thanks to a really discouraging and disheartening article i read in 10th grade, i've known for awhile that there is nothing official or real about these names - the names these agencies assign are only recognized by the agency itself and not by the wider astronomical community. sometimes i wonder, though, if maybe both agencies picked the same star for my name, independently and 18 years apart, and maybe that star and i really are meant to be.

not quite sure what to do

i used to think of myself as a very patient person, but lately (as in over the past year or so) i've been getting fed up easier and have felt more like i'm tolerating certain people instead of enjoying them. it's not anyone specific, and it's never my closest friends, but what happened to slowing down and listening to people and appreciating what they have to say, even if it's not incredibly interesting, or they're taking too long to say it, or i've heard it before? what happened to walking slowly even though we could be walking faster, because it's more important to be with somebody than it is to get somewhere 10 minutes earlier and alone? i have discovered that i have this newfound drive for efficiency, and i don't like it.

i don't know what i'll end up doing with my life, but i do know that i'll need a job where there is air conditioning in the summer. i have been melting this week. ew.

i can tell that we are going to be friends

ok, done with that whiny nonsensical self pity! the interviews went pretty well, i didn't know what to expect but they didn't ask any ridiculous computer science questions, so that's good. we'll see! it's a really exciting program, and everyone i talked to today got me pretty excited about it. (in case you can't tell, it causes a lot of excitement.)

in other news, i keep finding more stuff i need to unpack and find a place for here at home. there is just not enough space here anymore! sadface.

in other news, bryanna got guitar hero! she also showed me how i could buy a used ps2 online so buying a guitar hero or rock band would only be +$80 instead of +$120. we'll see, but not until i have a salary.

6 flags tomorrow with bryanna and the twins! it's already too late to get a good night's sleep, but what else is new?

lastly, i've been having fun with imovie lately, and with all of the footage i have from the spring semester. i've only put together a mormon movie (still have THUD and blocking group clips to sift through), but i'm pretty proud of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GGqMhDk9c whenever i crop a clip or make the film go faster i like to pretend i'm nikki(1)!! wheeeeeee.

been home a week. it's just as wonderful as i remembered, and i'm loving it just as much as i hoped i would. well, maybe not quite as much - have been studying lots and lots of computer science for an interview in brea on tuesday for a fellowship that would be wonderful to get, except that it starts on june 30th. which would mean that instead of the whole summer with my family that i was expecting (the only real perk to being jobless after graduation), i'd be out the door forever in 15 days. probably not forever, knowing me, but potentially forever. also, who am i to be applying for computer science jobs? what do computer people do all day? code stuff? code what? all of these interviewers ask me what kind of job i am looking for and i have nothing concrete to tell them so i have to come up with things like "interesting and challenging opportunities at innovative companies such as yours" except i stutter a lot when i say it out loud. what is it that i like to do? make cards. write letters. work on perfecting the details of stuff that is really important but actually not really important at all, like zombie musical dvds, im crew subs, spreadsheet formatting, and color-coded t-shirts. let people know that they are important. provide help when it's not extremely necessary but still appreciated. listen to people talk about their passions. learn about other people's passions so they can become my passions too. figure things out. find interesting and awesome details in articles, website, pictures, and people. look things up when i want to know. be sometimes outside and sometimes inside. read clever things and hear worthwhile words. get to know people well. stay up late whether i should or not. play with my dog (maybe this generalizes to spend time with people who are excited to see me). eat foods that are delicious.

to be fair, i do know why i'm looking into computer science - i really did enjoy the classes i took when i was up-to-date on what we were learning, and computer science is the best way to start working with robots. my enthusiasm robots has been the one novel academic(?) realization i've made over the past four years, so i may as well go for it, right?

too early for this

just watched the episode of felicity where noel graduates and started tearing up thinking about leaving the people here. there are a lot of people i'll never see again and, even though we're friends now, it won't make too much of a difference when they're not a regular part of my life. there are others who i'm going to talk to all the time and who i'll see a couple of times a year, i'm sure. there are some people, though, who mean a lot to me and who i actually care about, but i already know we're not going to stay in touch. jon's whole blocking group, for example, and maybe even jon himself. alex komoroske. mike badgley. what are other people's plans for staying in touch? do we need to make some sort of pact, like we'll all be in the same place at the same time at least once a year? what if we only get together at weddings and reunions? what if we don't even get together at weddings? what is life without running into stefan or yonas every couple of weeks? sundays without krystal walker? what am i doing with my summer or for that matter with my year, and how is it going to help me figure out what to do with my life? i would love so so much to be home, but i would absolutely hate to be so separated from everything and everyone harvard. i think what would be best is if everyone moved to san diego. yes??

in other news, i just finished two awful awful weeks of schoolwork and commitments. i haven't been that stressed in a really long time, and truth be told i'm not sure what i would have done without the help of my home teachers. everything finished today at 6, though, and it feels really really good. i just remembered that i have an interview with the bishop tomorrow for my patriarchal blessing, and that feels really really good too.

looked it up

it's kris.

in cs51 lecture

i am sitting at the end of an aisle. the guy across the aisle sat next to me in the writing placement test during the first week of freshman year. i don't think he knows this. he just got up and left the room. today i found THE RANDOMEST place at harvard. someday i will take a picture of this place and post it here, so you at home can enjoy it too. the guy isn't back yet. now he is. his hair is shorter than it was 3.5 years ago. i think his name is chris, or maybe kris.

i've been thinking

there have always been certain doctrines and concepts in the gospel that have been my favorites, and while some of them may shift in and out of the top 5 spot as time goes by (as time goes by!) and i learn new things, there are the stalwart few that always give me chills: the all-encompassing love of God, the love that parents can feel for their children, the need to bear each other's burdens, joy. lately it seems that every spiritual lesson or discussion i have has boiled down to one concept - charity - and over the past school year i have been developing an ever increasing appreciation for the word.

i went to a service at memorial church on martin luther king jr. day, and while many wonderful things were said and i left completely inspired to learn as much about dr. king and read as many of his speeches as possible, my overall impression was one of muted revulsion (that might be kind of harsh, but i can't think of term that describes it better). i really enjoyed the keynote address (a woman who became a preacher in her 50s and started at harvard divinity school on september 11, 2001) until she started talking about charity. i can't remember exactly what she said, but her main point was that "charity" is becoming an increasingly meaningless term that is thrown around to describe the handouts and the attitudes of pity that people feel towards the poor. she read the relevant section from 2nd corinthians 13 and replaced every instance of the word "charity" with "caring," trying to encourage the congregation to think of the former in terms of the latter, that charity isn't just doing good things, it's feeling and caring and being involved emotionally in the well-being of others. i appreciated her message and what she was trying to do, and perhaps that's the only way you can reach some people, to rephrase tough concepts in words that they might more readily understand.

my insides were wrangling themselves into horrible little knots, however, the longer she kept talking about the outdatedness of "charity" and how what charity really means is caring, and how if we simply care about things and people we will understand what paul meant by "the greatest of these things." caring is definitely a wonderful manifestation of charity, but charity is so much more than that. the pure love of christ - it cares, it mourns, it doesn't leave room for jealousy or for hate or even for being annoyed, it necessitates the sweetest humility, it inspires constant kindness, it rejoices in everything true (not just spiritual truths, but academic and personal and other truths as well), it "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." exercising charity is the closest we can come to godliness while here on earth, and is one of the most important things we can ever possibly learn. i think that in matters of most spiritual significance we shouldn't try to come up with replacement words that appeal to our understanding but rather increase our understanding to include the full meaning of our spiritual words. caring is part of charity, but charity is so much bigger than any one other word could possibly convey.

"Real charity is not something you give away; it is something that you acquire and make a part of yourself. And when the virtue of charity becomes implanted in your heart, you are never the same again. It makes the thought of being a basher repulsive. Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other."

- Marvin J. Ashton ('The Tongue is a Sharp Sword')

i see PRIDE. i see POWER.

intersession has been going wonderfully and i don't expect it to slow down. just today: museum of fine arts, 6 episodes of veronica mars (that show is SO san diego), new friend named nikki (nikki3!), fancy italian restaurant for emily's birthday, cannolis without watching Escape From New York, wearing new clothes and bright colors, and lunch with 60% of PLAN-B. connecticut tomorrow with the mormons! planning to make the very most of senior spring.