Epona42's Journal

8:58pm: Wedding Date!
FYI - For those who don't follow me on facebook.

Adin and I will be getting married Friday, September 24, 2010 between 5 and 6:30 pm at the Jewel box in Forest park.

Woo! one item taken care of!

6:28pm: Help me, travelers.....
Who on my friends list has been to Ireland?

I need suggestions for a week-long-ish Ireland trip. I've been browsing IrishGetaways.com .... does anyone have any suggestions for websites / companies / places of interest / hints or tips ?

I'm looking at 3+ people, (Mom, me, adin and whoever else we can get)... we want a package deal, but self-guided. More History / tour leaning rather than pubs / nightlife / shopping... and I MUST get a horseback ride in somewhere... I'm leaning towards a Southern type route....


from this one website, this is my top pick atm...
http://www.irishgetaways.com/ig/prepackaging/ui/package_details.aspx?PackageID=11&ptype=Self-Drive%20Tours

though i'm sure i'll find others.

3:55pm: New computer is up and running... and so,so shiny.

9:01pm: So, a bomb went off in clayton today across the street from my work.

It wasn't a big one, but it did severely injure the target (?) and I think a couple other people.... They evacuated all the high-rises on that block afterwards, which i happened to be able to see while sitting at my desk.

Last I heard, what happened was that a bomb was hidden in/as a box and set in an assigned parking space, when the guy moved the box... boom. Local gossip is that he was a lawyer in the building above the garage, and it was a retaliation attack involving a case... the news said he was a resident of the condo building attached to the law office... maybe both are right, or neither.

They had FBI/ATF stationed around the block all day, and people who have cars/belongings in the garage/building won't be able to get them until tomorrow.

Kind of Freaky, you know? I was actually staring at that building when it supposedly happened (I spend a fair amount of time randomly staring at that building, since it is the view from my window...) I didn't see/hear anything other than the evacuation, but i think the garage entrance is on the other side of the building.

...

6:10am: off to my very first business trip ever. So nervous. Thankfully i don't have to do much

12:21am: FYI
Adin and I will be in champaign Friday/ Satuday for Adin's birthday and hanging out at various gatherings.

If anyone wants to get together/ do something specific give one of us a call.

5:09pm: Today at work, we celebrated Eero Saarinen's Birthday with a carrot cake imprinted with an image of the arch.
Then we had Saarinen trivia messaged out to the office for awhile.


I was probably way too amused by this.

11:14pm: I finally saw "Wall-E"

It was adorable, and very well made. I loved that they used classic music rather than some random-radio pop that we'll all hate in a year.

For the past 15 minutes, i've been watching snippets of "Hello, Dolly!" on you tube (Young Michael Crawford!), and have progressed to Phantom tunes (Deliciously more mature Michael Crawford).

Over the past 15 years, I have never failed to be enthralled by his voice. *drool*

5:20pm: You might be a WoW player....
If you suddenly attempt to navigate Excel spreadsheets at work using the A-W-S-D keys.

\actually happened to me today

10:39pm: So, I have the Oddest TV ever.

It's awesome, don't get me wrong... It's all brand new and shiny, and thanks to its "Touch of Red" accent border, matches the decor amazingly well. It can also connect to our LAN network wirelessly, and play movies/music/whatever off a USB port.

However. the other perks..... are odd. Recipes? Reflexology Lessons? Sudoku? A visual history of French Impressionist Painters? Bedtime stories for kids when you're too busy to interact personally with them? On my TV????

Yes, all this and MORE. Of things that I will probably Never Use. All of it is REALLY on there. It's not even connected to -anything- other than the power outlet. I can't even begin to fathom exactly =WHY= they put the random things on there they did. Either i'm further removed from normal society than i think, or the manufacturers are going quite literally insane.

1:05am: FYI
Staying the night in Champaign tonight, and doing final cleaning on the old house tomorrow. As it shouldn't take too long (hopefully) , there is talk of possibly seeing a movie or something tomorrow. if anyone else is interested, either give me a call, or check back here (i'll try to update with plans if i can)

4:09am: "The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."


1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
3.5) Strikethrough those that you tried to read, but couldn't finish out of boredom or frustration. (some (most) of my strikes are also "Started, but didn't finish because i was reading a copy i didn't own, and had to give it back/never bought my own copy to finish)




1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

6:52pm: So, I downloaded the Spore Creature Creator to play with while sick.


I'm SO disappointed that there are already hundreds of Spore-Trogdors. I need to think of something else.


Edit: So, i made a Glo-worm instead. It's rather terrifying.

8:10am: *sigh*
So. Now the -New- basement is flooded, too. Thankfully it didn't get to what little we have down there, but GODS THE ANGST. Updates later.

12:26am: just got back from our latest trip to C_U for another truckload of stuff. About 12 hours later than we wanted. We had to stop at Adin's mom's place and sleep for many hours.

At least were home now, and we only have 1 more trip to make out there for stuff.

7:01pm: I set up my DDR today.

So far, i've played 36 songs, and it's telling me that I've done the equivalent of jogging 2.4 miles. Yay, me.

Oh, and vlad helped my snagging my socks with his claws at any opportunity. He's good at helping.

6:11pm: moving schedule
Moving Schedule Update:
( Mostly in hopes that if i write it down, we'll stick to it )

1:47am: apparently, online quizzes know how often i've moved....

10:50am: Woo! Aced all of my classes this year, somehow. (well, 2 As, 2 A-'s, but all A's nontheless). I guess they take down the GPA for -'s, as those 4 As got me a 3.89 GPA for this semester, and my total grad cumulative GPA is 3.8.

I'm pretty happy with that. I don't think mom will be, but i am.

2:54pm: FYI
"Death note" - Movie based off the anime/manga, is playing tonight (and tonight is the last showing) at Savoy, 7:30 pm.


Adin and I are going, anyone else in? I know it's at the same time as sushi, but this is a one-time-deal.

3:39pm: Next few days....
Really, more for my benefit.

Today (Wednesday 7th)

-5pm-8 (?) Study group for Real Estate final Done!
Eat something <- oops, forgot about that one
Finish Term Paper for Sustainability class (currently 50-60% done) Done!

Thursday 8th

Take online final (2 hours) That sucked more than i thought it would. B in that class
Review Term paper, email to prof.
Update thesis book (currently... 0% done)
Print 2 copies of book, bind both @ kinkos, burn document and board images to CD to turn in


Friday

Make sure term paper has been emailed before noon
Turn in Thesis Documents @ grad office before 4pm
1:30 - 4:30 RE final
Pick up cap and gown.

Saturday

Sleep
Sleep
figure out what to wear under cap and gown
clean out studio! Done Weds. While waiting on study group
clean house
maybe get a haircut

Sunday

wake up obscenely early
be at school, dressed and looking fabulous by 8:30 am
Fret
Fret more
somewhere between 10am - noon - actually graduate

after that - sleep, or host party, depending on who is around

Monday

Horseback riding?

2:21pm: thesis presentation is done.

Missed the wedding i was supposed to go to today, but i'm still planning on making it down to the reception. Adin decided i needed sleep more than a 3 hour drive, and i love him for it.


still tired though. I think it'll take a couple days for me to recover from the all-nighters.

Have a bunch of houses to look at tomorrow.

Can't think of anything else to sat at the moment, still brain dead.

4:14pm: So....

I have an offer. Theoretically am being sent a Letter of Agreement as we speak.

This is for the firm i've been working for in St. Louis, and my start date is set for July 2, which gives me plenty of time to move and perhaps take a couple trips.


Wooo!

5:16pm: Wooo.



Design Midterm review done. It went very well.


yay. I can eat/sleep again.

9:39am: So, just to let you all know....

I woke up at 8:45 this morning. On my own.

I blame the riding and excessive carb intake from last night, i passed out around ten.


But hey... daylight is awesome!