It’s here, but it definitely doesn’t feel like it. If the weather doesn’t get any nicer, and by ‘nicer’ I mean ‘warmer’, I’m going to have to hurt somebody… Texas and snow do not mix.

My list of things to do before heading back to Waco:
- Read All The King’s Men for World Cultures IV.
- Write a paper for WC IV.
- Study for Social World II midterm (who the heck gives a midterm after spring break?)
- Revise Constitution and Bylaws for grammar. (YEAH!)
- Read the perks of being a wallflower. [edit 3/11/08: wow.]
- Read Velvet Elvis.
- Write two reports for Chinese.
- Finish Chinese workbook assignment.
- Write a letter to the editor regarding biased and uninformative reporting on Friday’s article about Senate.
- Continue researching university bike lanes. Create a proposal.
- Have lunch with Ms. P [edit 3/11/08: It was nice catching up. She's been going through a lot.]
- Interview with Northwestern Mutual [edit 3/12/08: The interview process is so long -- it's far from being over. I have a good feeling about it, though.]
- Catch up on lost sleep! [edit 3/09/08: I'm done sleeping. No more for me.]

If you’re my friend, and if I haven’t seen you in a while, I’m definitely not too busy to make time for you! Promise.

I’m facebook-fasting. I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while, so I decided that it would be a perfect time to start. I’m on it way too much for my own good. I’m not sure how long I can keep it up, but hopefully at least until Easter. We’ll see…

Poor kid.

I got a request to update this, so I will. But honestly, I don’t have anything truly amazing/wonderful to share.

1. Arrested Development is my new favorite show.
2. I finally sent in that housing contract release request form. (Mary, this snippet is for you!)
3. I really like Student Government. Really, really like it. <but is that news? nope, not really.>
4. I made Oreo Balls for my The O&P men. It was a hit. I’ll be making them again soon.
5. It’s leap year. How exciting!

Karen Dillard’s College Prep and Jasper High School’s principle, Michael Novotny both in trouble? It’s too good to be true!

Thoughts?

It was a beautiful film. Smart, well-edited, great plot, and the cast had such great on-screen chemistry. And not to mention, I teared up twice. I can’t remember the last film I saw that had the same effect on me. I’m also thinking that we’ll be seeing Ryan Reynolds in more quality films from now on, thanks to this one. It was such a great story about making mistakes, finding true love, and the writers even threw in some fun references to the ‘92 election, the Lewinsky scandal, and Bush pre-White House. It was a tad bit longer than it should have been and I did get a little antsy in my seat, but all-in-all it was fabulous. I walked out of the (nasty Waco) theatre smiling and feeling good. Go watch it! Check out the trailer, too, if you haven’t already seen it.

E: Hey you wanna go play pool tonight?
Me:  Uhh… no not really.
E: It’s me and a couple of kids from class.
Me: I was planning on working out.
E: Oh. Well we weren’t going until 10, or 11, maybe 11:30. I’ll give you a call when we leave.
Me: … okay.
—
So I went to the SLC and ran and played a little on the stationary bike and on the weight machines and jammed to my “1. Warm up!” and “2. Run!” playlists before heading back to my room. I was sweaty and gross and extremely hungry (I didn’t eat dinner before going to the gym). Popped some Easy Mac into the microwave (hey- don’t judge) and took out the trash. Danielle told me that I had a missed call. A missed call and a text message from E. “Hey we’re going. Do you want me to come pick you up?”  “No”, I thought to myself. “I think I’d rather stab myself in the eye.” <– I might have said that last part out loud.

But I called E back and gave a lame excuse about how my roommate was in the bathroom (she was at the time, but only for a few minutes) so I couldn’t shower, blah, blah, blah. “Well, okay, but let me know if you change your mind,” E said.
—

Twenty minutes later, he called again. “We ended up not going, but we’re at Common Grounds. Do you want to come?” “I’m still waiting on the bathroom…” I told him. “Oh, well come after you shower. We can study!” “Uh, okay.”

My vocabulary isn’t very large to begin with, but it only seemed to shrink as the night progressed. Probably because I didn’t want to talk to him or go see him or anything like that. Or maybe my daily caffeine intake is really taking a toll on my lingual abilities.

But I saw him in class today and he did that thing where he turned his desk to a 60-degree angle facing me. That’s nothing new, since it happens practically every class. But it really pissed me off today. And then, we had to do a skit, and guess who ended up in my group? Yeah. Lame.

It’s only Tuesday, and I’ve managed to get myself into yet another awkward situation! (Okay, yes, technically it’s Wednesday, but I haven’t slept yet, so it’s Tuesday.)

Sneaker-sandals called me in the middle of my committee meeting today. I told him that I was busy and would call back in fifteen minutes. So I did. He asked me if I had eaten. I said no. He said that he would pick me up. Why?, I asked. Phi Chi date dash at Peter Piper’s Pizza!, he said. Do you want to go? … … You know how in movies and on t.v., there’s always an angel and a devil sitting on someone’s shoulders when they’re about to make a decision? Well, okay, it was more of a “be-nice-fairy” and a “you-don’t-honestly-want-to-go-fairy” on my shoulders. And guess who won? Yeah.

So he came and picked me up. We were definitely like sardines in his frat brother’s Ford Explorer. Made it to P.P.P’s in one piece, and thankfully not permanently welded to Sneaker-sandals. Didn’t eat because the pizza looked like it was made with moldy cheese so I stuck to my cup of water. They had cups of tokens so we went and played a gun-shooting game and a video version of Deal or No Deal and won fifteen tokens. It was super awkward because I’m pretty sure he’s not the popular kid of his fraternity, but that’s beside the point. You guys have to realize that he has a girlfriend who is a couple of states away, but his body language and the way he acted definitely stated otherwise. So awkward!

All in all, I did not have fun. I don’t even enjoy my cheap-o neon green friendship bracelet that we got as a prize for trading in those tickets, and the neon green ones are my favorite. I did not enjoy sitting in the back of a car with his arm on the back of my side of the seat. Nor did I enjoy having to make small talk.

I think this is God’s idea of a cruel joke or something. Two odd back-to-back experiences. What’s next?

—
Okay, so that might have been a tough one to decipher, so I’ve made a glossary for you, dear reader!

-Sneaker-sandal: Awkward kid I met the first weekend of my freshman year. He thinks he is a Ninja. No joke.
-Phi Chi: A Christian fraternity on campus.
-Date dash: a popular Greek event where members are instructed at last minute to find a date within a certain time frame and make it to a central location, where planned festivities occur — usually food of some sort, accompanied by an activity.

I decided on the way back from Plano that I needed to hit the gym after all the Chinese New Year (read: eating until immobile) festivities this evening. So I called up Mary N. and we agreed to go after some studying/Friends-watching got done.

Everything was going great. The treadmills were new(!) and were just begging me to run on them. The mats were free of smelly people and I could stretch and do crunches as much as I wanted to. The weight machines were for the most part uninhabited and there was none of that ridiculously awkward waiting-for-the-other-person-to-finish-so-I’ll-stand-and-twiddle-my-thumbs business. It was perfect…

I could feel my legs getting less jiggly by the minute, so I stopped my weights workout. Mary N. hopped onto the machine and I stood there, catching my breath. And then!– this creepy He-Woman made eye contact with me across the railing that separates the free weights from the weight machines. And this is the horrifying transcript of the longest thirty seconds of my life:

He-Woman: Tiffany?!
Me: …no, sorry.
He-Woman: Really? Oh that’s too bad, person-who-has-a-face-just-as-cute-as-Tiffany. That’s okay. I’ll just stand here for a minute and look at your cute face and then I’ll leave.
Me: …uhh… (I turned to look at Mary. We shared wide-eyed glances in horror. Then I turned to see if He-Woman was still there. …he/she was.)
He-Woman: (stares at me, bug-eyed. blinks hard a couple of times. continues staring again.)
Me: (turned again to look at Mary. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.)
He-Woman: (blinks hard two more times.) Okay, bye! (returns to his/her free weights).

In the five seconds between his/her awkward staring and his/her “okay, bye!”, Mary had already hopped off the machine and was ready to run out of the weight room with me.

Mary: “Jess! He was raping you with his eyes! Oh my gosh!!”

And the moral of this story is:
Don’t go to the gym alone. There will always be creepy people, and the creepiness is more tolerable if you have someone there to feel uncomfortable with.

And to all the He-Womans in the world:
If you are fat, jiggle, and have boobies, along with a slightly higher-pitched voice than your male compatriots, it doesn’t help your appearance at all if you also have pierced ears.

Some might call it a quirk, a habit, and you might even be able to get away with calling it a bit.

But it basically comes down to this: I can’t sit down and study unless my room/work area is spotless. Really. I think I just spent the last 4 hours arranging and rearranging things that don’t need to be moved. I have also gone through two pots of coffee since the beginning of my cleaning quest. I’m also not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that can’t be good…

See, I’m in a bit of a predicament. I have oodles of classwork and reading to be done before class starts in about 9 hours, and I also have to get myself to sleep before then. But Jess, you’ve been out of class since 1:00 today! I freakin’ know!! But I’ve been running all across campus and back and forth from the SG office. And I had a little bonding time with the new suitemates, and a project meeting, so cut me some slack, will ya?

I shouldn’t be blogging right now, but I absolutely honestly cannot help it. I should be reading two days’ worth of The Wall Street Journal, excerpts from The Leviathan, completing my chinese workbook assignment (do I have a quiz in the class tomorrow?), and reading about genes and gene transfers or whatever you science type people call it.

I’ve been distracted by my upcoming excursion back home this weekend. All this thinking about stuffing my face with deliciousness has really taken a toll on my poor, over-worked brain. A girl can only handle so much at a time! With classes and quizzes and a lurking exam, and thinking about cooking and baking this weekend, my brain is entirely pooped. Yes, I’m trying to justify my procrastination. And yes, I do feel (relatively) guilty for wasting so much time, so I’m gonna go now.

[edited at 12:55 a.m.]– okay, so I had to take a shower first. I like being clean. :)

I’m going to admit it.

I’m blind.

Was, is, and probably will be. Especially if it takes me this long to figure things out.

I was blinded by my own desires… it looked a lot shinier than it seemed. I was blinded by my ignorance… I try not to be, but sometimes I am. I guess you could call it human fallacy. I was blinded by Your will. It was so magnificent that I couldn’t even see it. It was so good that I didn’t even want to acknowledge that it was there. I wanted more. I didn’t want to think about the possibility that I was exactly where I belonged. I can’t believe it took me an entire year to figure it out, too, especially since all the signs were pointing to it. I get it, God. I finally get it. I can’t believe that I ever questioned You. I can’t believe that I didn’t listen after all three Student Body Officers and the VP of Student Life sat me down and forbade me to resign from Senate. “We’re not going to let you make the worst decision of your college career. You can’t leave. We’re not going to let you resign.” And “Even if you do get voted in, you can’t quit Senate, Jess. You need to realize that it’s where you belong. You belong there because you’re good at what you do. Whatever you do, don’t leave Senate.” I can’t believe that I didn’t listen after they came around the first time and told me that I wasn’t voted in. “Take this as an opportunity,” they said, “to pursue other things.” I did end up pursuing other things: Senate. Chairing a new committee. But I wasn’t doing it whole-heartedly. I only saw it as a time-killer that would keep me busy and occupied until Spring Rush. I didn’t fully appreciate the frontier I was presented with when the entire Intercollegiate Committee was placed in my hands.

But today I saw, and I mean that I really saw, that Student Government is my niche. I am truly blessed to be in a position where my talents and passion can be fully utilized to do good, and do well at doing good. I realized it when one of my committees had to review Court nominations and freshman Senator and Officer nominations, and also when I had the opportunity to sit in on interviews for the sophomore senate opening. I realized that I had been focusing and thinking like I never had previously, like I got a new eye prescription. I saw. I see it now, that I was foolish to try and pave my own path through my college career, and not sit back and let You take the reins and steer me through.

Thank You, for giving me peace in my heart. Thank You, oh so much, for allowing me to finally realize that I just need to trust. Thank You.