1 generous helping of turkey
1 glass of blueberry wine
+1 knock-down-drag-out game of Sorry with the brothers/father
---------------------------------------------------------------
=3 hours of unavoidable slumber while the rest of the kiddos bemoan the delaying of the Pumpkin Pie

I love Thanksgiving. God is so good to us.

Ah-HAH!

I'm going to blog now.

But only for a few minutes, because I'm really supposed to writing a paper on Africa's Green Revolution. The cloudy part is that I have absolutely no motivation to write it right now. The silver lining (which, as you know, comes standard with every cloud) is that this is my seventh out of eight papers due for this class--almost done, I am.

Actually, this blog post represents a minor defeat in Nellie's full-on assault on the big, bad Procrastination Monster. And I've been doing so well recently. I made a list of things I had to do this weekend, and I've pretty much been sticking to it, with the major exception of not even starting the book on which I have a test on Wednesday. Ah well, getting books done is not normally my problem; if I'm up all night on Tuesday...eh...that's the way it goes, I guess.

To balance out the minor defeat, I had a minor victory this morning--I actually made my bed. Right after I got up. Go Nell!

You may think that is pathetic, but trust me...it's even worse than that. See, I cleaned my room and washed all my sheets two days ago, but I "didn't have time" to make the bed then, so I just threw everything on the bed and went to get some schoolwork done. I was going to do it that night, but by the time I got back to my room after playing a late gig at the YMCA I was far too tired to do anything. So I just put the pillowcase on the pillow, and slept on the mattress pad with the quilt mounded over me.

You'd think after such a traumatic, ridiculously unnecessary sleeping arrangement, I would have made the bed upon arising the next day. You'd be wrong. I studied history until 1:30 last night, and so was again too tired and slept under the pile of sheets. Well, this morning, the realization of how pathetic the situation was finally smacked me upside the head and so I made the thing up. I put some freesia and lavendar oil in the diffuser, as well.

So now I have a clean room, a clean floor, and made bed. And it all smells nice.

Now if I can just get my fingers to type....this...paper...

I'll get back to you later. (And to those of you to whom I owe emails, I will be writing those in a few days after my exams are done. And they'll be very cheerful emails, too...I'd be looking forward to them, if I were you... ;) )

Subject: I'm moving to Hawaii!!!

Body: When Jesus was on the cross, you were on his mind.
Forward this with the title "i'm moving to (a state)" or you're denying him

For some reason, I don't think Jesus Christ had blatant trickery in mind when he said "Go ye therefore...". And although the sins recounted to me on Judgement Day may be many, I doubt that refusing to inflict such an idiotic message on other victims will be one of them.

I don't know who starts these things, but I'd love the chance to toilet-paper their house.

Overheard two hours ago:

Mom: "Okay, I'm going to turn the dishwasher on now...no one flush the toilet!"

I'm beginning to suspect our recent plumbing problems may be more serious than I'd imagined.

coenaesthesis!

I'm not procrastinating right now in the least. As in, at all. It's horrible...I don't know what to do with myself. Don't I have some project I'm putting off? Somewhere? C'mon now!

In the absence of schoolwork, my brain wanders to other things I wish it wouldn't. I'm far too easily distracted.

I think I'm the only person who would take the SAT after being enrolled in college. Does this sound insane to anyone? Well, it sounded insane to me at 6:48 Saturday morning, believe me. Still, it was rather amusing to sit in a room with a bunch of freaked out Juniors who had it in their heads that their whole future rested upon the next essay, or multiple choice question.

I loved doing the English part. It's like playtime for me to find all those pesky little verb tenses in the wrong place. ("...hah! There you are, you little booger! Thought you were going to fool me, didn't you?") The reading section had a passage from a book I've read and liked, so after I was done answering the questions, I re read it for fun, with a chuckle at the brilliance of the phrasing. I'm a geek, sure.

Math? Heh. I can do the basic, important stuff, but formulas (sadly) completely escape me. It's pretty incredible how much of a dunce I am at these things. In a test situation I basically play the percentages. (See! Now that's math I understand.)

Overall though, I expect a good score, which I will never show anyone. I'm weird that way.

Right now, I'm procrastinating something horrible. Paper to write for tomorrow, that's not even started. Bad me.

I've just discovered a hole in my sock. Huh.

I'm done.

One of the joys of attending a liberal, public college is disagreeing with almost everything that is said.

Case in point: Geography class. Population control. Apparently, I'm only allowed to have two children, because the US is overpopulated. I'm showing my insensitivity to the plight of orphans in Africa if I have more. I told him I planned on having significantly more kids than he recommends and he responded that I was skeptical because I hadn't gotten in the workforce yet. He said that children were trouble, and too expensive to indulge in nowadays; he hadn't had any himself...couldn't be bothered. It was irresponsible of people to have more than two.

Can I take your alotted two, Dr. A? You obviously don't have any use for them. I'll change their diapers, wipe up their spit, clean up their messes and spank them when necessary. I'll show them how to read and write, play baseball, and speak Ubbi Dubbi. I'll tell them goofy stories, fold paper airplanes for them, teach them how to play piano and wink at them when they knock their glass of water on the floor. I'll teach them to love God, to seek beauty, to stand up for the defenseless, and to never back down from the truth. By the grace of our Creator, they'll be worth the miniscule percentage of the earth's resources it will take to sustain them.

School started again. On Wednesday.

The first few days have been an absolute blur, for reasons I'm sure all my university-attending friends can relate to. Figuring out last minute adds and drops, book purchases, bad profs, good profs, figuring out which classes will require the most work, which classes are easier than anything, which people are the absolute freaks, and which are relatively sane has been kind of an interesting process.

Geography is going to be the most labor intensive, but I think once I get into the roll of studying and time-management, I should be okay. The professor is great (even if he is a srong proponent of evolutionary theory), and it's actually kind of interesting to see how continents and regions are laid out, keeping human culture in mind. I'm not looking forward to exams and papers (one due every week!), but considering my past academic record, I should be able to pull through okay. I think I can pull off an A.

History is by far the largest class, but the prof is fun enough to make up for it. There are no papers, only exams, which is a huge gift considering all the other writing I will be doing this quarter. There are some interesting books included, and we're studying mainly the Civil War, with which I've always been fascinated. I don't forsee this being a terribly difficult course.

English has been an adventure so far. I changed classes at the last minute because I realized that putting off English 110 for another quarter will not make it go away. Shucks. So the first class I tried was, shall we say, horrific? I didn't know anyone could be that bad of a lecturer. I can't even explain how bad it was. (Prof: "Ok, so people, it's not I SEEN, it's I SAW. We're going to be working on that this quarter." Nellie: "Tell me this isn't happening.") I decided halfway through the class that I would die if I had to sit through one more period of that highly evolved version of Chinese water torture. Then, I thought I might take an honors course, but when I met the professor, he reminded me of a shorter, more-educated version of a...certain radically left-minded, liberal-thinking relative. And the course was focusing on torture throughout history. How cheerful. (Nellie: "Have they considered the practice of making every bloody student in the Uni sit through English 110?") So, I ended up with what I consider to be the best possible alternative under the circumstances: a decent (albeit easy) 110 course taught by a professor I've had before and liked.

Oh, I joined Chorus! Yay! I didn't realize when I signed up for it that you had to audition, so I spent a very stressful 24 hours singing "Silent Night" non-stop. Fun. But my bellowings evidently didn't scare the director off, because he didn't kick me out. I'm so happy I get to do something music related that I can look forward to while I'm sitting through lectures and exams. Look for further postings about chorus, because it looks like it could shape up to be quite amusing.

[ insert brilliant closing paragraph here - I have history to read ]

N	New
E	Entertaining
L	Little
L	Legendary
I	Insane
E	Earthy

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com

I present proof that artificial intelligence is far from intelligent: none of these things apply to me.

New: What is that supposed to mean? As in, to planet earth? Granted, I'm not a senior citizen, but I've been around for nineteen years.

Entertaining: Um. Well. Ok, this can apply, but not when I mean it to, i.e. watching me try to play certain sports.

Little: I really should be savoring this moment, since the last time I was called little was when I was...well...little. I'm 5-10ish now. Maybe compared to Lisa Leslie.

Legendary: Ehhhhno.

Insane: My grip on sanity, though tentative, remains, thank you very much.

Earthy: Other than the classical sense, I don't understand what this means practically. At all. Therefore, I can only say I'm not it.

'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost!'

I spent last night and most of this morning freaking out over The Great Divorce. I shouldn't read Lewis; it's really becoming unhealthy. Everything he writes is so darn brilliant, and I always end up hyperventilating and shivering whenever I come across one of those trademark one-liners that brings everything he has said so far into a glorious perspective. Great Divorce is full of them. It's too much for me to handle. Man! Leave me alone, you genius authors!

Excuse me; I'm going to go breathe into a paper bag now until I calm down.

I got my guitar back. There was great rejoicing in the house, or, rather, my room. I sat down, relearned a few chords I'd forgotten, wrote about two songs, and promptly fried my fingers. A year of being a piano geek will do that to you. I'm really reconnecting now with my inner folk songstress, complete with button down shirts, sandals and unhindered hair. It feels great.

In other news, Switchfoot just released their new CD and it sounds awesome. I haven't gotten it yet because I'm a poor student (now bearing a guitar) and I've got some pretty hefty bills coming in from the upcoming school year, but when I have some spare change, that CD will BELONG TO ME.

It strikes me that this entry sounds vaguely like a vintage WFW post. I wonder how I managed it.

Untitled Document

I'm feeling in love right now. Not because I am, but only because I'm sitting here listening to some very angsty music from 'Cold Mountain' and feeling melancholy and emotional.

Ok. Now I'm going back to what I was originally trying to do, that is, write my stupid book.

You all know I'm on LJ, right? Well I did a game there yesterday where you look up your name here, and post the meaning on your LJ. I looked up Nellie.

Nellie
Light: French

Versatile, intelligent and artistically talented. You love to enjoy yourself and tend to experience a happy domestic life and material success. You have a methodical and thorough mind and are able to organise large projects easily. Charming and likeable and with more than your share of sex appeal you tend to find yourself in the spotlight and much admired by others. Life is more fun with you around.

Reading this, I go on a high. I'm charming! Likeable! Admired! And sexy! (Take that, Angelina Jolie.)

Then, on a whim, I look up another name.

Hitler

You are responsible, determined and tenacious with sound judgement and the ability to inspire others making you ideal for positions of leadership. Having broad vision you are happy to accept the challenge of handling large projects which others may find too demanding. With your keen intuition and inventive mind you are always seeking answers. Fair and just you have a warm and compassionate nature which attracts many friends.

Right. So much for 'sexy'.

mnelliestpauls,
originally uploaded by nellieness.

I know some of you have already seen the beta-version of my London pictures. But, I just uploaded a ton more, and spent an hour and a half labeling them with all kinds of sarcastic, quaint, funny and ridiculous explanations. I even put some new explanations on some older photos. All for your viewing enjoyment. Just click on the "England" set, when you get to my Flickr account.

My email is driving me nuts. Not knowing whether people are going to get what I send them has some definite inherent problems. I never know if I should send emails again or what, and of course if the intended receivers never got them, they can't let me know. So, I'm forced to either spam people with multiple copies of the same email, or leave people hanging who expect emails and don't know that I'm doing my best to contact them.

And I feel horrible for even thinking about this, with so much pain and devastation in the South. I've been listening to the radio, and all the reports of looting and gunfights among the looters. God help us all. I can understand taking food as a measure of survival, but televisions? Diamonds? Lingerie? This is the scum of humanity. I remember reading "Lord of the Flies" and being struck deeply at how fast we can morph into animals. It's so sad to watch this play out, not being able to do much of anything about it.

I wish I could go and help.