Your favorite princess is chronicling her epic quest to gain allies, vanquish depression, and get the diploma. Come for the journey, stay for the bad puns.
If you're looking for the Disney stuff, that starts here - http://dragonscales.blogspot.com/2015/11/im-going-to-disney-world.html
I'm thankful for my amazing family who support me throughout all I do.
I'm thankful for my brother, who is stronger and way more interesting than he thinks he is.
I'm thankful for my sister and her energy and enthusiasm.
I'm thankful for my mom, who always means the best for me.
I'm thankful for my dad, the calm eye of the storm.
I'm thankful for my grandparents, all of them, who have spoiled me and fed me more than I deserve, and continue to endure.
I'm thankful for my cousins, and the endless games of Apples to Apples and all the laughter.
I'm thankful for the other assorted people who are related to me, who always seem to pop up in the weirdest places.
I'm thankful for all my aunts and uncles who lend flavor to family gatherings in more ways than one.
I'm thankful for the opportunity to attend the University of Arizona and have all these great experiences that I've had.
I'm thankful for my friends, past, present, and future, for making me laugh and for lending an ear.
I'm thankful for where I live, which has allowed me to meet so many of those friends.
I'm thankful for having food to eat, water to drink, and a place to sleep.
I'm thankful for all the great experiences I've had which have enriched my life.
I'm thankful for my books which let me get out of my head for a little.
I'm thankful for my life and my health, without which I would have none of the above.
Alright, Thanksgiving is over which means Christmas is now legal.
What's out: short shorts, sanity, and the color yellow.
What's in: hoodies galore, facial hair, and the color blue.
No-Shave November has hit its peak - at a guess, I'd guess that at least half the males on campus have taken advantage of the excuse not to shave for a month, the vast majority not giving it any greater significance. It's almost funny seeing the full range of facial hair from those who can barely grow peach fuzz to those people who went from nothing to full on Chuck Norris beard and mustache. However, at this point, a good number of them who were raring to go at the beginning of the month have chopped off their 'beards' complaining of the itch.
It's finally gotten cold, and the weather turned quick - last Saturday day was sunny and beautiful, but that night got down to below 50 degrees. As such, that Monday, the hoodies came out in force. It was almost comical to see everyone in cold weather gear varying from "light breeze" to "Oh crap a blizzard's coming!" So now, I guess it is officially winter.
On Monday there was a talent show for the three dorms on Historic Lane (but mostly Yuma). We have some seriously talented people living here. Mom would be happy to know that those Irish Dance lessons finally paid off. I danced barefoot and was extremely well received.
Otherwise, pretty boring week. Some of my classes were still a little scrambled from the Tuesday off for Veteran's Day (especially my lab), but there really hasn't been much new by way of classes.
From Facebook, a post which was surprisingly well liked: I have more library cards than the average American has credit cards. Help, I'm a biblioholic!
(The average American who has credit cards has 3.7, average among all Americans is 2.6 {from here}. I have 4 library cards, all of which I use fairly regularly).
I also found a cute little library within scootering distance, so I don't have to go brave downtown to get my book fix. (cue parents' groans).
Also from Facebook, a beautiful picture of me exhibiting for homecoming (there was another guy there helping out, too):
Song of the week - "Clocks" by Coldplay. Nothing else compares.
In cosmically cool news, a refrigerator probe launched by the European Space Agency (the EU's answer to NASA) successfully touched down on a comet two times as far away from Earth as Mars and about 1.5 miles across at its widest point. (xkcd covered it live). This is the first time anything human made has purposefully landed on a comet. The Philae lander is taking pictures and recording sound, and taking and analyzing samples and what it has sent back (with a 27 minute delay, of course) is pretty amazing.
In relatively inconsequential local news, homecoming was a lot of fun. I didn't go to the game (I know, shame on me, no excuses, how could you, etc.), but I got to help present UA Rube on the Mall. We were in the College of Engineering tent, where all the best food (and the coolest people) were, sharing a table with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (Bake sale!), who were pretty cool. We showed a video of our machine so far (from the beginning cup cascade to the pan zip line), and, when little kids seemed really interested, I showed the MTD/waterfall piece (that I painted!) from last year's machine. It was really cool to see people, especially kids, so interested in something that I spend too much time doing. Oh, and the homecoming parade was pretty cool, too. Funny thing - the only Greek float that got a cheer from the COE tent was the Theta Tau (engineering fraternity) float - the rest seemed to be met with death stares. The Society of Automotive Engineers, who showed their Baja and Formula cars in the parade, got huge cheers, as did the band. I guess we're all slightly vindictive nerds.
It was fantastic seeing my parents over the weekend. I'm glad they came, and I think they had a good time too. They got to see a lot of their old friends, see the campus again (including a personal tour of the rec center), and (of course), see their darling daughter again.
We've started playing with solenoids (large coils of wire) in lab, using magnets to induce current, inspiring all the manner of dirty jokes. In learning about electricity and magnetism, I've also learned a lot of right-handed physics gang signs along the way.
We've almost finished reading a play, La dama del alba, in Spanish. It's pretty depressing - it's a soap opera with a characterization of Death in a pilgrim woman, which leads to all kinds of shenanigans and accusations. I'm enjoying it so far.
The theater dance of the past few weeks has been "Sherry Baby" from Jersey Boys, featuring an annoyingly high falsetto singer and a tricky six-step.
Nothing that exciting is happening in my other classes, but I'm powering through. I'm going to be okay this semester.
Song of the week (because I've got xkcd on the mind and it's funny) is "Every Major's Terrible," based on "Modern Major General" from Pirates of Penzance.
It's homecoming weekend, which means white quadropedic tents have taken over the mall, tug of war mud pits can be found in random places, and people are trying (and failing) to get the student body excited about what should be a mediocre game on a weekend where so much other stuff is happening. But hey, there's free food.
I'm not too excited about the football game, because Colorado is currently at the bottom of the PAC-12 and despite losing to UCLA, we're still one of the best teams in the country. I am excited about seeing my parents whom I have not seen since I went off to school in August. That will be interesting.
It's been a bit of an off week - no tests (phew) but just a paper on Choctaw language revitalization to write (it's pretty cool - there's an app for that - the language, that is ;). I aced a Statics test (because I truss in free bodies) which was pretty cool.
A good number of my friends concluded that I am better than their collective fathers at "dad jokes" especially the ones involving corny puns (What did the monster drink his beer from? A Franken-STEIN!) I was a-maized that they thought that of me, and took it as a tall compliment. Hopefully there were no strings attached.
My Halloween day was pretty boring; but on November 1st after a long day of building for Rube, I went to a costume get together at one of the Rube girl's houses. It was really low key, but I'm glad I went. I'm sure our dance to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" is still floating around somewhere. No, I didn't get anyone to take pictures of me in costume. Sorry. It wasn't that great anyway - half of every other girl was also dressed as a black cat in various degrees of dress. I had a black shirt, cute short sleeved jacket, black pants, and of course, duct taped black cat ears. It required a minimum of effort, but I still looked good in it.
Also, speaking of Rube, we got the machine to work across the top part of the counter. This part of the machine involves cups, spatulas, blenders, and birds and is really impressive. If you're on Facebook, there's a video here.
On a side note, it's National Novel Writing Month. No, I'm not writing a novel (I don't have the time to churn out 1,667 words per day) but I am writing a short story. You can check out my progress - right now it's called "The Machine" and can be found under the tab labelled as such on the home page of this blog. Let me know what you think.
