Gross!

Sophia and I apparently aren't very good about cleaning out our refrigerator. This is all of the old food that needed to be thrown out, a fruit cup, spaghettios, chili, soup, tuna, carrots, and a chicken caesar wrap. I also pulled out and threw away sour milk earlier. Yuck! Man, we need to keep on top of these things more, the fridge is basically empty now.
All gross food.

And then some lovely moldy spaghettios, the white spot in the bottom left is not the flash.

Ok, 3 weeks left, 18 days until Christmas Break!

Time to get cracking. I wrote out a nice long list of stuff I have to do this week, mainly papers, a portfolio, a speech, and catching up on reading, so that I can actually start studying next week for finals.
With the whole buy back thing I knew I was going to get a lot of hours, but man. I'm working 5 days a week for the next 2 weeks, 47 hours alltogether. So much for Laura to do, not enough Laura to do it. But hey, Christmas money! I am sleeping all day when I get home December 17th or 18th...

Happy Turkey Day!

Twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, I go and visit my extended family to celebrate the holidays. Seeing lots of 2nd cousins, great aunts, and first cousins once removed. Now that everyone's getting older it's getting a little better. The "kids" table is no longer really made up of kids, since the youngest is 13 and the oldest (me) is 19. I think I answered the same question about 10 times, "How's college?". But hey, what can you expect? My mom was told many times, "I don't know how you do it!" and "You're going to have to give us advice for when our babies move out!"
It's kind of fun to be the first one to experience all of these new things. It was the same way when I was the first one to get my license.
Ok, that was a big sidetrack, I wanted this post to reflect Thanksgiving, so here is what I am thankful for:
A family who loves me and would do anything for me, even though I won't always ask.
Friends who truly love me and care about me like they too are a part of my family.
That I have had the chance over this past year to come to know and experience God's amazing love.
That I live in a country where I don't have to be afraid of anything except for spiders and the occasional thug on the street.
The chance to go to college.
An awesome room mate.
Tons of encouragement and support in everything that I do from everyone I know.
The chance to meet new people and experience new things over the past few months.
Frozen dinners.
Hot showers.
That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there's more. I am so greatful for every part of my life. I think it's important that we remember these things not just today, but always. That we thank God and praise Him for the life that we have and are given the opportunity to live. Even when things seem rough, He is there to help us and guide us along.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I am thankful for all of you who read this blog as well for being in and affecting my life in some way.

Promoted, sort of

I got a compliment from my manager yesterday. I'm going to be one of a couple of supervisors for the buyback season the week before and of finals. It's kind of a big deal and it means I'm doing a good job for them to feel that I can handle this! Yah!
Moving up in the food chain. For 2 whole weeks I'll be making more than minimum wage, and won't have to worry about not working over Christmas! Woohoo! Only problem is I'll be working a lot more than normal, and over the finals time. But that's ok. Just a little more stress.

Two Lives

Or maybe even Three Lives.
Last weekend I had a lot of fun hanging out with Corrie at her apartment. Went to see the Billy Graham Crusade, which was definitely meant for an older audience, but it was still enjoyable and interesting. Saturday ate at Gourmet Pie, yum! Then went to Jill Blatt's son's birthday party, that was fun too. Next off to UCLA where we hung out with Emma in Westwood and ate at BJ's and then took her home. Lets see... demolished a couch, decorated for Christmas, laid out in the rain. Sunday was study time after enjoying delicious El Pollo Loco! I probably should have gone home earlier on Sunday but I decided that I wanted to go to Satellite too since the next time I go probably won't be until around Christmas time, unless I manage to go this coming up Sunday during Thanksgiving break.
I made it back here last night at about 12:00 where I proceeded to study more for a Spanish Test that was supposed to be earlier today. I managed to stay awake until about 2:00AM but couldn't function any longer. So the plan was to get up at 6:30 this morning. I swear I only remember hitting the alarm once, but anyway I peered groggily over at the clock at 8:45 this morning, the test was at 9:00. But it was cancelled because so many people weren't ready! Phew! That was nice. Although I could have gotten more sleep, stink. Oh well though, less to worry about for later.
Sophia woke up in the middle of the night last night with a 103 temperature. Great. Poor girl. She thinks she has the flu. So I have to say it might be a good thing I'm going home tomorrow, hopefully I'll avoid the flu as well. I hope she gets better though. Corrie was starting to get sick this weekend too, but now's such not a good time, so I'm hoping I don't catch anything! I'm going to make Thanksgiving a bit of catch up on sleep time, that should help.

Guess Where I Am?

At Compex in Torrance. Random eh? I drove up here from San Diego today to meet Corrie at work and as soon as she gets off at 4:00 we're going to go to the Billy Graham Crusade at the Hollywood Bowl. Should be fun. (Random: Corrie's chair just broke and she screamed really loud for the whole office to hear and laugh at her).
So I'm kind of hear for the weekend. Tomorrow Corrie and I are going to go to Jill's son's birthday and then possibly to L.A. to visit Emma and go out to dinner with her. Yah! So it's Friday! Woohoo! Nice to be done with classes, although I only went to 2 out of 4 today.
I was trying to figure out my schedule yesterday and figured out it's going to be crap for next semester, anyway more on that later.
Sunday is Sophia's Birthday! She's finally going to be 18, yes she's a youngun. Her boyfriend and a couple of friends are coming down to San Diego to visit her so that should be cool for her, but also makes it much easier for me to take advantage and crash at Corrie's for the next couple of days. It's kind of funny though because on Sunday I'm going back to San Diego and then going home again on Tuesday night hopefully, Wednesday morning at the latest. The dorm rule is that you absolutely have to be out of the dorms by 4:00 that afternoon and it would be nice to avoid the Thanksgiving traffic.
Time to go soon! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Brown Bags and Greasy Wieners

Today was one of those days where I felt really accomplished. Yes, I still have a lot of homework to do, but I got a lot of other stuff done. I worked out, made my parents a present and mailed it, went to a Brown Bag discussion for the honors program, went to a Speech to critique for my Comm class, and that's about it.
So I learned what a Brown Bag was today. No not the thing you put your lunch into. Many of you probably know, but I didn't. It's a discussion type of thing where any topic is put out there and you sit around with your food that you brought, in a brown bag, and discuss it. Anyway I thought it was kind of neat actually, something that I think I want to participate in more. We talked about, what else? the war in Iraq. But more specifically the imperialist America and how we have so many military bases all over the world. Then Tricia and I went to the "speech" for Comm. However it actually turned out to be another brown bag type of thing discussing death at a coffee house near downtown called The Living Room. Again it was very interesting and kind of cool to be able to discuss in an age range from college kids to retirees.
Tricia and I loved this coffee shop too, we're definitely going there much more to study.

Outside of the coffee shop was this fun hotdog stand, gotta love it.

25 Years and Still Going Strong

Today is my parents 25th Anniversary! Congratulations guys (even though you don't read this). It sounds funny to say from their kids perspective, but I am so proud of them. They have truly set an example for me of what a loving marriage relationship is supposed to be. After 25 years they have survived so much together, having 2 kids, sending one to college, the loss of my mom's dad, my dad losing his job and having to move to northern California for a few months to work, friends getting divorced, and I'm sure there is much more that I'm not aware of. Thanks for being wonderful parents! I love you!


My mommy and daddy.

Huh?

Last Saturday since I was home I babysat 2 of the kids that I used to babysit all of the time. Anyway it was fun, a night of The Grinch, pillow fights, reading fun books, and tacos.
Also Max and Eric have these sticky monster things that they were throwing everywhere, walls, window, TV, and ceiling. Well one of them stuck on the ceiling, the 20 foot tall ceiling, so no getting it down. I thought it was funny so I took a close up picture of it. I know, random, but that's ok because I am random remember?

Yah for cancelled classes and a little bit of time!

It's finally feeling like I have a little bit of time to enjoy life and college lately. The studying load has slowed down a little bit. Of course finals are in about a month, so the "slowing down" is about to quickly speed up I think.
Anyway, had one cancelled class today and one yesterday, so that was nice. I haven't had too much to write about lately, or I have, but I've just been too lazy, I think it's called blogapathy. So I thought I'd write a random short post. But as I write it I'm not really in the mood so nevermind. It seems that I get all of my ideas to post when I am in the middle of a school day, or driving somewhere, or doing something else not near a computer, then all the ideas are gone, oh well.

Linkage

Some of you may have noticed that I now have links on my site! Thanks to Melissa Mae that is. She put them up for me last Friday and changed my template too (aka my blog looks different for those of you who were confused about template). However if you actually attempted to click on the links a few of them weren't working. So I went through it today and fixed them and added a few, enjoy!
By the by, check out corrie's site today, the last post describes part of my weekend :)

What does Procrastination look like?

THIS

Shark Deaths at the Long Beach Aquarium

My mom was telling me about something that happened at the Long Beach Aquarium a couple of days ago. It's really sad, I just can't understand it. We used to be members of the Aquarium so they sent us this letter. The people who broke into the Aquarium were 13 year old boys. The letter doesn't say everything, but supposedly the kids dragged the sharks around on the ground outside, torturing them.:

The Aquarium of the Pacific is saddened to report that sometime Sunday
night or Monday morning someone broke into the Aquarium's Shark Lagoon
exhibit and injured or killed several animals. We lost one of our nurse
sharks and one cownose ray, and a bamboo shark that was injured passed away
Monday night. Other animals were moved or injured but will survive.

Monday night at approximately 9:00 p.m. trespassers were found on the
Aquarium grounds. The Aquarium contacted the Long Beach Police department
which made four arrests.

The Aquarium is extremely saddened by this terrible act of animal cruelty.
These animals lived in our interactive touchpools and personally touched
the lives of millions of people who have visited the Aquarium. They were
gentle animals that served as ambassadors inspiring wonder and respect for
the ocean and its inhabitants. We are at a loss as to why anyone would
commit such a cruel act on these animals. We are very grateful to all our
members who support the Aquarium and care so deeply for our animals.

My room mate

When you go to a school where you don't know anyone and choose to live in the dorms with a room mate you just kind of have to HOPE that the two of you are going to be at least semi compatible.
In my case I would say that I definitely got lucky. Sophia and I get along really well. It was kind of funny because I wouldn't say that we clicked right away, but over the past few weeks we've become much closer. We started doing random things that I think all room mates should do together like driving to Knott's Scary Farm, seeing midnight showings of movies, helping each other procrastinate, alot. Sharing our parental frustrations and friend issues.
It's pretty awesome. If we weren't both pretty laid back I'm sure there would be many more issues. But she doesn't mind that I NEVER make my bed and often have things strewn all over the floor. And I don't mind that she has the same floor problem and lost our remote. Well actually maybe I am still bitter about the remote, hehe, just kidding, It's more fun to have to stand on the chair and reach up to turn the TV on and change channels!
Anyway I love it! It makes this whole transition thing to college, and yes sometimes it Still feels like I am making the transition, so much easier.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention one thing, Sophia is albino.


Just kidding.

My bed

My mom sent me this email saying "Guess who's been sleeping on your bed?" This is one of my 3 cats. His name is Rosie (yes I said his, there was a slight mix up when he was a kitten) and he weighs about 16 pounds, big for a cat.
Glad to see someone is enjoying my bed while I'm not home, good thing I don't have allergies because my white comforter is apparently full of black cat hair, I'm not really surprised.
That's one thing I do miss, my 3 little kitties, well I'm going home next weekend for the first in 5 weeks, so I'll get to see them! Oh yeah, and the family too.

Living and Loving Life

Friday night and part of Saturday I had the chance to visit with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. I invited my friend Niki from Long Beach to come hang out with me and spend the night and she came! We had a lot of fun, I took her downtown (which I think she really liked) and we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and did some shopping at Urban Outfitters and the like. It was fun because Niki was enjoying the freedom I have sort of become accustomed to now. Since she still lives at home I know she loved not having to worry about telling her parents where she was or when she was going to be home!
When we came back here we just vegged and talked and ended up watching a movie.
We discovered that if you put my sleeping bag on the ground and then your own on top of that then the ground actually isn't hard at all! So if anyone else feels like coming to visit....

Why not?

It's Thursday night around 9:45ish, neither Sophia or I have much homework or much to do. So I mentioned that the new movie "The Incredibles" has midnight showings in some theatres. Well, neither of us could think of a reason Not to go, so we invited another girl Cherise that I work with and went to see it! I mean hey, we're young, we're in college, we don't have curfews, and it's a school night! What more of a reason do we need?
The movie was really good too, I definitely recommend it when you feel like a good laugh!
Of course now that it's 2:40 in the morning and Sophia and I are not tired at all this could be a problem with the whole class situation tomorrow, or technically today I guess, oh well!

Go Vote!

Brave the long lines and do it! It's worth it, make your voice heard! This is one of the most exciting elections in a long time, and for people my age, as many of my fellow students are, it's the first election we get to vote in! So take advantage!!

And One Thing Leads to Another...

Ever get into one of those cleaning modes where you do one thing and then it just seems to spiral until before you know it you've managed to clean not only your entire house, but your whole neighborhood? Well that's what it felt like I did tonight.
I started off doing laundry, not just clothes, but towels and sheets too, there's only so long one can wait before it's absolutely necessary. Then I decided to get the Zura vacuum since my costume left the floors kind of gross and my rug needed to be vacuumed too. Next I took out the trash. Then I swiffered and cloroxed everything. And then I did my dishes. Next I replaced the water filter on my brita pitcher. Cleaned out the fridge, Sophia had left some cantelope in their long enough to grow mold. Put all of my books away in the bookshelf. Hmm, I think that's about it. All I had planned to do was the laundry too! But it's nice to be in a clean room. Time to put the clothes in the dryer...

Whip Cream is Fun

This is a random picture from my Birthday a few weeks ago! It was so much fun. Corrie, Emma and I got into a whip cream fight, where we learned that Corrie was allergic. I thought we were going to have to call 911 she got so red and swelled up so bad! But she was ok luckily. Thanks for the fun memories girls :)

Laura's Birthday Bash