Hicksville, USA

In my attempt to obviously do anything but sleep tonight, I came across some interesting facts about my super-hickish state of Washington. I lay these before you... laugh as you will:

Washington State Symbols:

flower: coast rhododendron (1892)
tree: western hemlock (1947)
bird: willow goldfinch (1951)
fish: steelhead trout (1969)
gem: petrified wood (1975)
colors: green and gold (1925)
song: “Washington, My Home” (1959)
folk song: “Roll On Columbia, Roll On” (1987)
dance: square dance (1979)
grass: bluebunch wheatgrass (1989)
insect: blue darner dragonfly (1997)
fossil: Columbian mammoth (1998)
fruit: apple (1989)

The sight of this makes me want to move onto a farm and start pickin' at the banjo, but I guess that really wouldn't be too far of a stretch... considering that you pretty much have to drive south with your windows rolled up and internal air blasting to avoid the smells of rural Washington any further south of Fife. Shew-ee am I sure as heck glad that I's live in the city with all them internal plumbin' and such. But seriously. Don't these attributed state symbols seem a bit out-dated? Not according to the evidence, it's not! I mean really- was square dancing really that popular in 1979?

I guess I did feel a bit better after seeing that Washington isn't completely alone in giving the fine art of square dancing such high honor, and that contrary to popular belief, California's state dance is not the C-walk. I also got a nice chuckle out of the fact that Oregon's state drink is milk and Conneticut's state animal is the spirm whale. Immature? Some may say so.


In other news...

I am most likely moving out of the dorms and into a house with a couple friends next quarter. Freedom sounds so so sweet... and not to mention the extreme reduction in the cost of food- my bank accound is glows at the thought already.

Adam comes home tomorrow!!! (And by tomorrow I mean Thursday)

Patrick and I took a road trip up to Western on Saturday and I got to visit all of my super-awesome friends that I havn't seen FOR-E-VER! It was super sweet, and I even got to go up to Canada for a few hours and have my first legal drinks! Yay for Canada and Friends!

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(1. A giant IHOP pancake in Bellingham. 2. Billy being awesome as always!)

I am now tired and in need of sleep.

Super Duper Soccer Weekend

I guess I'll procrastinate from studying a little more. I wanted to tell everyone about my awesome weekend anyway. I went to OSU (Oregon State University) to play in a soccer tourniment with my club soccer team and we kicked BUTT! I'm serious.. we were soooo good! If you came to any of our games last year (which you probably didn't unless you are a parent of someone on the team) and compared it to our play this year, you wouldn't even guess that it's the same team! We ended up beating OSU 2-0 and U of O 3-1, tying U of Portland 1-1 (but dominating the whole game) , and losing to UC Berkley 0-1 on a fluke goal. I think we for sure dominated the tourniment.

It was especially great because we were the only team without matching uniforms. Granted we did have matching t-shirt uniforms and purple socks, but nothing compared to the University of Oregon team who was given everything by their school including warmups. The reason it was so great is because is always sucks to lose to the ghetto team... and we were the ghetto team! Just because we had to share jerseys during the game due to the fact that we didn't have enough for everyone didn't mean that we weren't organized or that we couldn't play well. Oh well... we were ghetto and it was great.

Of course it wasn't just the soccer that made the weekend great. The girls I got to hang out with are awesome too! We had such a blast just hanging out and being goofy. On the way down I rode with Amber, Sherri and Erin in Erin's car, while most of the rest of the team was in the 12 person UW van. Even though the van left a little bit before us, we got ahead of the van by quite a bit. This was noticed when we called them to find out where they were while plotting to moon them upon passing them. We pretty much spent the next hour pulling situating ourselves to perfectly exute out attack. Unfortunately only about 5 people in the van were awake to see the glorious unvailing of our buttox's, but it was still great.

We arrived at our destination that night to find that our sleeping quarters consisted of a cold field house with 1/16" thick turf, which subbed as our bedding for the night. Though extremely uncomfortable, it was still fun to hang out with everyone and cuddle for body heat. We also went out to thai food and played a bit of Balderdash saturday night, which was fun as well. I think I've made this blog long enough. So I'll leave you with a few fun pictures from the weekend.

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(1. Bellevue, Amberlance, and Kristi. 2. Crazy Hippie. 3. Adrian caught off guard.)

Evil World

The world is out to get me... or at least to keep me on track. In my attempt to take a nap today (or tonight- 6pm) so that I could just be refreshed to study for my physics midterm tomorrow, Dani tried her best to keep me from achieving this simple task. She first started by being really loud and telling James on the phone that she was "just being really loud so that Sybil can't take a nap", followed by a "present" which I refused and received anyway (the song, "wake me up"), and the ever-so-dredded sound of her chair rolling toward my bed, only knowing that she was coming for a last attempt to keep me awake. In the end, I was either successful in making her believe my giggling yells of "I hate you!" or else she just gave up, because I ended up drowning out the sounds of strongbad and homestar and falling asleep. That is, until my alarm clock went off. As usual, I figured that another ten minutes of sleep wouldn't hurt. Unfortunately this time it did... literally. After I hit the snooze button and started laying back down, I started to slide off the side of my bed, frantically looking and reaching for something to grab on to, only to find myself hopelessly on the ground while Dani laughed hysterically at me. If you need a better visualization, Dani took a picture of it, so here you go:



Sad, I know. But I figure that there must have been a reason I fell off, because I woke up more awake after my nap than before.

A Change for the Day

Today was a bit out of the ordinary, but definitely in a good way. I signed up to do a fast-a-thon about a week ago, in which I signed up to fast for a day (today) and the Muslim Student Organization had companies give money to Northwest Harvest for every person who fasted. In essence, I went hungry for a day so that someone else wouldn't have to. They made about $1200 which was said to feed about 2000 small families. It was a great experience- I got to learn a lot about Islam and what Ramadan is about. It was also really fun to see all the students (muslims and non-muslims alike) to come together to break the fast for a common purpose. I wish I could do something like this more often in order remember how lucky and blessed I am to have all that I have. During one of the speeches I also thought about how I wish Christianity had something like this, until the speeker (who must have been reading my mind) reminded me about lent. So I now plan on actually fasting this lent as opposed to giving up something that doesn't help me to recognize the needs of this world, like TV.

I also had a really good time in classes today (especially religion section). We had a worksheet to do comparing and contrasting a passage in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and since I thought a lot about it and really took my time doing the reading last night I had a lot to say and contribute to the class. It's always nice when a prof or TA says "Wow, that's a great point- I didn't even think about it that way" in regard to a less-common point of view. I felt very articulate and able to spit out exactly what I thought (which isn't normal).

Tomorrow I leave for OSU for my soccer tourniment. I can't wait to get to hang out with my team, because my teammates are sooo awesome! It's funny though, because I seem to think that about every soccer team I play on. I think it's just a soccer bond. For instance, pretty much the only thing I miss about high school is my soccer team. Is that normal? Oh well... If I'm crazy and wierd, so be it- somebody's gotta be, right? I also get to hang out with KEITH when I go down to Oregon, so I'm really excited about that too. I havn't been able to go down and see him due mainly to a lack of a car and time. We decided that we are going to eat thai food and see "Ray" which should be great. Oh, how I love my friends!

Election Craziness

Although I claim it to be a waste of time to follow the election predictions and updates as they progress, I can't say much more for myself than the fact that it's 1:39 am and I'm not sleeping, but rather playing facebook and checking up on the elections. So... I guess my opinions on the matter don't count now. Why is it that I become so addicted to things so easily? i.e. Election polls on TV, Facebook, AIM (more last year than this), Anything BUT homework. At least I've stumbled across the amazing "William H. Gates Law Building" containing the most amazing and addicting library EVER. I mean just going in there makes you want to study. However I don't think that is any coincidence- I'm pretty sure it was in the $88 million plan for the building. Whatever. So now you have to come witness the bookshelves that move by pressing a button if you havn't already.




I mean just look at this building... Its amazing!

After learning in my math section today that I need to start going to class again, I rode the 271 home in order to cast my Go Kerry/Boo Bush vote at Sammamish High School. Consider Sammamish is my alma matter, I decided to look at the remodeling and say hi to a few teachers. It was AMAZING. Sammamish High School is absolutely gorgeous! I was fortunate to get to go into the state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar theater while it was still under construction and it was awesome! I probably would have even gone to a play while in high school if that theater was there! After bumming a ride home off of my friend's little brother so that I wouldn't have to walk the extra mile, I grubbed on mini oreos and many other unhealthy goodies and packed my self up to catch the bus back in time for my 6:30 physics lab.

I honestly felt like the biggest hobo ever coming back to school. So picture this: I was wearing my backpack, carrying a soccer bag full of more stuff, carrying a sleeping bag in this nasty sleeping bag sack over my shoulder, and wearing my new Hobo gloves. The only thing that would have made me more of a hobo would have been if I were carrying all of my bags in black plastic bags. I pretty much could have picked a place on campus and slept there for the night- not that this would have been a new thing for UW (hobo's sleeping/walking around campus).

Well its been a long night and CNN still reports that it's all too close to call. So far Bush is ahead 254 to 252 in the electoral votes. Hopefully the remaining states will pull though. WE NEED A REVOLUTION!