I am in Gryffindor and (much to his chagrin) Devin is in Huffledor. And we will have Gryffinhuffledor babies.

Welcome to the best blog of the year.  Why?  Because J.K. Rowling has affirmed the premise that I belong in Gryffindor.  Perhaps not personally, but through the site Pottermore.com, which despite Nicole’s bragging about, I started, since I told her about it.  Just kidding.  Sort of.  (Also I'm aware that the title isn't an accurate portrayal of how sorting works [it's not genetic (though I think the Weasleys make a strong case against this- I would've put Percy in Doucherdor) and you can't arbitrarily combine houses, such as "Huffledor", which I put Devin in because he has all the good traits of a Gryffindor but is really friendly/loyal, too, and despite what y'all say, I find Hufflepuff kind of demeaning.].). (<---- Surprise ellipses!)

Harper's Fairy

Tomorrow my friends Eleanor and Caitlin and I are going to Harper’s Ferry.  If you don’t know why that is really, really exciting to me, then you aren’t Derek.  On a family vacation/college tour, said person made his family drive hours out of the way to visit it for me.  “For me” meaning “to prove me wrong” in this context, about there being water and boats.

Almost 13,000 page views? Cool.

Bloggers, this post comes from an under-the-weather Rachael, so despite my hopes of matching Nicole’s amazing wit and captivating journey of a week that was definitely more interesting than mine, I will warn you that this post can do nothing except fall short.  I will be accepting flowers, money, and chocolates as well-wishing presents.

Are You Hungry?

Again, I didn't write this but it sort of reminds me of something Nicole would say

Hello, and welcome to my first post as a nineteen-year old.  May it be revolutionary.

 

Blue Font? Inspirational Speech Time.

My friend's roommate has a bubble wrap calendar.

Alright, well it’s 12:28 AM at the end of a long week, and I just watched a movie that has made me feel rant-y and inspirational speaker-y, so bear with me.  Give me a shot, because more art is on the way, so this post won’t be all bad.  By the way, the movie was Happy Thank You More Please, only formatted into one word because it was an indie movie.

I just want to start out with this: you are an exceptional person.  That’s what my dad always says when he gives me one of his speeches.  It just feels really good to hear that, doesn’t it?  You, YOU are an exceptional person.  I’m pretty sure I know pretty much all the people who read this blog, and if I don’t, one of the five of us knows you and I bet they think you’re an exceptional person.   So let’s just go forward with this premise.  Also, if you only know one of the five of us and don’t know me but are still reading this, I’m really impressed.  That definitely qualifies you as an exceptional person.

Butt-face (no, really)

Hello, there.

Between Tuesday, December 13^th and Monday, December 19^th, I have five finals.  I just finished my third of five.  So if I skip town now (I’ve done the math), I will have attended the majority of my finals.  That makes going home now justifiable, right?  In America, we don’t strive for perfection, we strive for justification of our actions.  Thanks. (Note: There was some confusion.  I'm not actually leaving before I finish my finals.  I just want to.)

Home is Where the Fart Is

Hello, all.  Devin and I are at my grandma’s in San Diego (well, Poway… yes, Derek, I encourage you to look at it on a map).  He took the train here today so he could spend Thanksgiving with his family, and we played a lot of cards today.

Started crocheting my next project… a baby blanket!  I’m excited.  None of you were especially impressed with the hat so I won’t elaborate too much, but I’m making a baby blanket for my friend Amber who’s having a baby in January.  She’s the one I work with who I told some of you was considering naming her kid Emma Rae, after me, sort of.  The Rae part that is.  But now she’s considering Tara and Brooklynn, each with the middle name Rose, now that she knows it’s a girl.  Regardless, the blanket takes three different yarns, and I picked pink, green, and yarn that cycles through a rainbow of baby colors.

Home Soon

             This week I had a wake-up call.  It was as powerful and over-caffeinated as the last drops of my Sweet & Spicy tea when I let it steep for too long.  It was because of this scholarship essay I wrote, I guess: this blog really matters to me, and you guys really matter to me.  I should put more effort into my blog posts.  We should see each other over Thanksgiving break.  Now onto our regularly-scheduled programming.

Skype cannot replace hugs. I miss my boy.

9:30 AM EST: I'm in class and I am not paying attention and I was looking forward to Rich's post. )=

3:21 PM EST: Everytime you check the blog something will be different!  Right now I am adding this Little Bee quote about tea because Jason and I miss tea!  Backstory: She is a Nigerian refugee talking to someone from Britain.

“Tea is the taste of my land: it is bitter and warm, strong, and sharp with memory.  It tastes of longing.  It tastes of the distance between where you are and where you come from.  Also it vanishes- the taste of it vanishes from your tongue while your lips are still hot from the cup.  It disappears, like plantations stretching up into the mist.  I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other.  How sad that must make you -like children who long for absent mothers.  I am sorry.” (emphasis mine)

All this tea talk makes me want to call my Mom!

I love that: "like children who long for absent mothers".  Has tea ever made you feel that way? Me neither, but it's a beautiful image.  I highly recommend the book.  And to clear something up: Nicole said it's no Middlesex, which is no Name of the Wind.  I haven't read Name of the Wind and I know I won't convince anyone who's read it, but I'd assert that Middlesex is better than Name of the Wind.

Bigs, Bracelets, and Buildings

Happy Friday, friends.  I love being the beginning of your weekend.  I will do a good job this week and outline everything I’ve done.  I hope Rich forgives me for not being a good Christian; I didn’t read the Bible this week.  If you want to stop here, Rich, you can.  Just cover your God-loving eyes.  That’s not a stab at all; I actually think it’s awesome that you’re reading it.  You ought to be one of those atheists who can out-Bible someone who considers themselves a die-hard Jesusphiliac.  Before I begin: I can’t promise a lot of caps lock; I don’t want to follow your lead as many others have decided to.

Fetch & Monuments

Alright boys, cute Danser—excellent friends: generous, helpful, intelligent.  Just kindly listen.  My name often precedes quite raunchy, sensual things, unlike very white xylophones…  Yell, “zenith!”

That doesn’t make much sense but it’s alphabetical anyway.  I couldn’t fix that y, z at the end but whatever.

I’m in lit class and we’re talking about Shakespeare and Milton.  Who of you know Milton’s first name without looking it up?  I always like when we ask these kinds of trivia questions, especially when I know the answer.

There... and Back, Again.

I have never related to anything more than this.  I love asofterworld.com

I’m glad that our blog is on Pacific Time.

"There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours. "

Hey, there.  I will reinstate the trend where people post on time, albeit barely.  I wrote this a long time ago but just got back from a showing of The Princess Bride <3 (That's what my title quote is from btw)

There is a lot I can talk about but I will be focusing on the latter half of my week, mostly because Wednesday and Thursday were two of the longest days I’ve had since arriving at AU.

A few announcements: (A) I had a paper and two midterms this week.  Those numbers are misleading because they are small numbers and do not convey the Goliath-esqe amount of effort involved. (B) Happy your-birthday-is-a-week-from-today, Derek.  Hopefully you get lots of nice presents. (C) My parents have requested to see more pictures of me, and since they pretend to read this blog, I will include those here.

"Time is making fools of us again"

When making fun of Palin, the question not "Why?" but "Why not?"

It’s already Friday again?!

How does time pass so quickly?  Dumbledore ne’er said a truer thing than the title of my blogpost.  He probably said other equally-true things, but ne’er a truer! Ne’er!  Yea, verily!

Speaking of which, I emailed Ms. Topping this week to have her look at a poem I’m submitting to our literary magazine and titled said email “Yea, verily!”.  Oh wait what I wrote poetry?!

Kan Chu Lai, it's Lion King Time!

Another week has passed already somehow!  The weeks go by so fast that I have to look at my planner to assess what I’ve done.  Turns out it’s mostly homework.  But there were fun moments, too.  I’ll focus on those.

Once you go Rebecca Black you can never go back

Title because it's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday?

Happy Friday, all. We made it through another week of college. Well, I think we did. I made it anyway, which is what counts.

A brief week summary (keep an eye out for the two links I've provided!):

Last Friday besides all of my technical difficulties in posting up my blog, I went to a cute farmer’s market across the street and got three orchard-fresh apples and four cookies. I don’t know if you have had orchard-fresh apples, but they’re worth the hyphen and extra three syllables. They look good, they taste amazing; they SMELL like heaven. I’m not going to real heaven but orchard-fresh apples are close enough. Promise. (Tell me how heaven is though. Since Nicole and I are outliving the rest of you, being vegetarian and all. Of course we’re all pretty atheist so probably none of us will get there. Jason would have except he’s a boozehound. Google it!)

I worked so hard to get this put online, so love me.

Evening, fellow bloggers.

I’ve been thinking about what to talk about for a while, and naturally all of it escapes me now. But the nugget of wisdom I’ve mined from college thus far is this:

-It’s all about having your hands full.

Physically: how do you close an umbrella while holding a purse, laptop, key card, textbook, newspaper, and hot chocolate all while opening a door to avoid getting drenched? Mentally: college, at its worse, is hell, and at its best is heaven. Not HELL, hell; I’m happy here. But there are moments of how-the-FUCK-am-I-supposed-to-read-two-newspapers-daily-AND-everything-else-you’ve-assigned-me? and wow I miss people.