Here I am, over a month since my last update. It's fall break now and I finally have some breathing space. I've been working on so much that I keep forgetting to update.

The last month can be summed up in terms of tears and panic. There are only so many ways I can be stretched and I can't do everything I'd like to. It seems like I'm always rushing to some obligation or another. I'm used to it now but it still sucks because I'm always letting someone down.

Highlights of my life:

Justin's birthday weekend was this weekend. I had a wonderful time hanging out with him and enjoying a little freedom. I got him chainmail juggling balls so that he can learn how to juggle. We also watched Lord of the Rings and nerded out.

The GRE went well enough - I got a 660 on verbal and a 680 on quantitative. I'm working on grad school stuff and a professor at OSU is supposed to call me today.

We had our first regatta in Pittsburgh, which was fun until the women's varsity 4 had to wait at the start for an hour in the wind just for our race to be canceled. That was some bullshit. We were all so ready to go and then... nothing.

Cosmo reading in the car. Wristwatch WTF.

Hope everyone is doing well in their respective places.

So much stuff. Senior year is busy so far. I take my GRE on Saturday - lots of fun there, I bet. Afterwards I'm planning on going to Ren Fair with Justina and various Witt friends. I don't know if I'm ready or not for it. I don't know if I'm ready for the real world, even. I haven't done any research, I don't have as much as experience as other people. I get good grades and all that but so does everyone else.

All I want is to be more motivated, but I can't even get things I want to do done. And I feel like no matter what I do I'm missing something, either with friends or with crew or with Justin. Everything happens at the same time and there's no room for me to do everything.

And I STILL need to present my work because I forgot to sign up for the damn presentations on Friday. *kicks things*

Just checking in to say that I am alive, just ridiculously busy. Damn you physics!

Fun fact about Put-In Bay: Every day at sunset the Boardwalk plays a patriotic song (The Star-Spangled Banner or I'm Proud to be an American) while they lower the flag. Because of this I always know when it's around 8:45. Also, the song varies in volume in a a very annoying way.

And then every boat in the harbor blows their horn.

Fun times!

Anyway, besides that class and life in general is going well. Justin came up this weekend and we got to hang out a lot :-D My friends here were a bit amazed that a guy I met on the internet was actually normal and nice and cute. He didn't go out with us on Saturday, being mentally and physically a fifty-year-old, but it was still fun. There was an awesome disco band at one of the bars which made me really happy. There were also fewer people at the BrewCo than usual so no grabby males. I left earlier than I wanted to spend quality time with Justin but it was still an awesome night.

Tomorrow my class goes to the mainland all day to collect lotic insects. Fun times ahead!

Also, we made a spider web with yarn in one of the guys' room. Whee!

"Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions.
Pass it on to 15 people (or not) and include me. Try not to repeat a song title.
It's harder than you think."

Pick Your Artist: Barenaked Ladies

Are you male or female: I'll Be That Girl

Describe yourself: It's Only Me (The Wizard of Magicland)

How do you feel about yourself: Unfinished

Describe your current boy/girl relation situation: Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Describe where you currently live: Some Fantastic

If you could go anywhere you wanted to go: Hello City

Your favorite form of transportation: In The Car

Your best friend(s) is(are): Light Up My Room

Favorite time of day: Next Time

If your life were a TV show, it would be called: Pinch Me

What is life to you: Thanks That Was Fun

What is the best advice you have to give: Never is Enough

Thought for the Day: Too Little Too Late

Excitement in the Linkous household! We apparently have an infestation of yellowjackets (Vespula maculifrons) under our fireplace. My parents had seen a few inside the house before, but didn't know where they were coming from. Tonight my dad and I were searching for the source. He opened the vent in the fireplace, which apparently agitated them. Fifteen came pouring out. What followed was an epic battle involving towels, a fly swatter, and a vacuum. My dad got stung on the inside of his mouth.

I think an exterminator is in order.

Haha! I have conquered Maya to a certain extent! My moth now flies like a real moth (mostly)! Now I must turn my attention to other insects, like dragonflies and bees. I think it'll go much more quickly now that I know what I'm doing.

I'm heading down to Justin's family's cabin again for the Fourth of July. We shall see how much water skiing will beat me up.

Tomorrow I shall be able to drink legally. And I'll be celebrating it in a dry county in Tennessee. Heh. I'm just going to bring alcohol, I think. I'm staying at my boyfriend's cabin on Lake Cumberland and they have wine coolers there too.

Working on research stuff has been good so far. It has been fun and challenging learning something completely from scratch. I've made models of insects and have started to figure out the best way to animate wings. Now to put it all together.

I hope I'm not too lonely this summer.

Today, I must go pick up my last physics exam, pick up BDub's wings, go to the Geek House party, go to the crew picnic, go back to the geek house party, clean up, and then study (hopefully).

Reading day is even busier than normal school days :(

At least I get good food everywhere I go! The library is having the senior's luncheon today so I snacked there, and the two parties will have stuff to eat as well. I should probably start writing my 15 page Honors paper but I have no motivation and no ideas. Might as well waste some time while I have it

...

Why the hell do I have Diana Ross' "Tenderness" stuck in my head? AHHHHHHHH.

I live! I just have no time, ever. I'm going to copy Bryce and Molly in a subsequent entry.

But first! Highlights from the last three weeks! In no particular order.

* Went to the Cincinnati Museum with Justin and saw animatronic dinosaurs!
* Won a bronze at West Virginia Governor's Cup in the man-ish four (I was the ish)
* Finished my computational project at four in the morning, and it is awesome
* Officially going to live in the Geek House over the summer
* Did half of a routine at the Swing Spring Fling - and my parents and grandparents and Justin were there to see it
* Almost had a complete meltdown!
* Justin met one set of grandparents
* Gave my biological literacy presentation - was nervous, but it went well
* Had a blast at Wittfest, even though hellogoodbye seemed slightly drunk
* Realized all the seniors are going to be gone far too soon :(
* Finally saw Slumdog Millionaire
* Caught up on ALL The Office episodes I missed
* Coxed a four

And now it's time to continue studying physics.

This is the first time I've slept past 10 in more than a month. It's amazing :)

I wish I just had a week to chill and not worry about school or anything else. Spring break doesn't really count for me because I was rowing. And now with crew season in full swing most of my weekends are booked. Summer can't come fast enough.

It'd be nice if I heard back for sure about one of my internships. I kind of need to know if I'll be staying on campus for the first part of the summer.

In a way, I'd actually like to get experience with the Center studying Buck Creek rather than the computational stuff. I feel like entomology grad schools might like that better than 3-D models. Also, I'd get to be outside all the time.

I aten't dead! And I actually have stuff to update about! I just don't have the time or the motivation. It seems like I'm juggling ten different things at once. Luckily I learned how to juggle in the third grade.

Pretty soon all you seniors will be gone. Let's see: Beth, Erica, Wendy, Davis, Jen, JT, AJ, and so on. Yeah, those are all kind of awesome people (except Davis, of course). It's hard to imagine college life without you. It's also scary in a way because in one short year I'll be in your position and I have no idea what I am going to do.

Back to my stupid Sociology paper that I can't seem to get right.

I feel so much more relaxed now. The physics exam today didn't go as badly as I feared thanks to Justin helping me study. We did an example problem that was very similar to one on the exam. I feel fairly confident that I got a solid B at least. I'm not so sure about my Bosnia paper though - it's ok and I followed the rubric but I never know how he's going to grade them. It doesn't help that I'm incredibly apathetic about that class. It has really lowered my opinion of sociology.

In internship news, I got into OSU's Stone Lab up at Lake Erie! It's a five week REU in which I'll curate the insect collection and take an Aquatic Entomology course with Dr. Trisler. I'm so excited :) For the first half of summer I may have another internship at Wittenberg doing computational science stuff - that could be fun, and I'd get paid pretty well for it. I haven't heard back from other internships yet but they don't matter so much anymore unless they'd be willing to take me on for only half the summer.

What I'm most excited about right now is the crew spring break trip. We leave in three hours to go to Camp Bob Cooper near Charleston, South Carolina. It's going to be a blast - a whole week of rowing and team bonding. We'll have three a day practices, but it shouldn't be too terrible since it's supposed to be in the 70s all week. Mmmmm sun. I've missed it.

I hope everyone else has a wonderful spring break!

I've never had a boyfriend on Valentine's Day before, so this was all rather exciting and fun. I drove down to Justin's house so we could go to the Pub (a British-themed restaurant at the Greene. SOOOOOO good). Got Bangers and Mash, which was delicious - even the peas were palatable and I hate them usually. We drove from there back up to Springfield so we could see All Because of Agatha. Justin really enjoyed the play and said it made him want to act again. Everyone was great in it, though it was weird seeing Beth be a girl. After it was over we drove back to his house and collapsed into sleep. On Sunday we just lounged around and played video games. Eventually we watched Stardust (love!) which he thought was very cute.

Yay awesome boyfriends!

Erica's suprise party was super fun. I wish Beth had taken a picture of the look on her face. We played Apples to Apples and Disney Trivial Pursuit. I'm going to miss my seniors :(.

Today for crew we're going down to the tanks in Cincinnati. A crew tank is basically a zero-shaped pool of water which you sit besides in boat formation and row. All the starboards are one side and the ports are on another. The water circulates around as you row due to the motion of the oars, kind of like a lazy river. Besides not actually moving it's fairly realistic and great for training. And next weekend is erg sprint and semi-formal! I'm hoping to pull a new record 2k time, which for me would be around an 8:35. All I have to do is make sure I'm still a lightweight, which means I should probably lose two pounds before next Saturday.

In non-me news: Obama invest in high-speed rails - This is a really great idea. Having a railroad run to through all the major cities of Ohio would cut down on congestion and reduce pollution. It would save the crew team money too because we wouldn't have to drive to some regattas. Plus, trains are AWESOME.

I'm not dead yet! I'm just really busy. I have a computational exam in four minutes, but I have no idea how I'll fare.

Argh.

A car alarm has been going off for the last four hours on my street. I believe it may have achieved sentience and is now trying to communicate via morse code.

What makes it better is that every two minutes or so it shuts off, and there's hope that it's finally done... but no. It just starts up again.

Time to blast some music!

The first 3 people to respond to this post will get something made by me. It will be about or tailored to those 3 lucky individuals.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make! I however, will like it or it won't be sent out in the first place!
- what I create will be just for you.
- it'll be done this year
- you have no clue what it's going to be. because i have no clue what it's going to be.
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well, if you expect me to do something for you!

It's 2009. Thank god.

I'll post some sort of year in review thing later, but now it's time for pork and sauerkraut at my grandparents' house.

Christmas break is a blessing. There's no longer a gnawing fear that I've forgotten some assignment or meeting. I didn't even realize how tense I was until I felt its absence. Now the only deadline is Christmas Eve for wrapping presents and I'm already done with that except my sister's unbought present.

Last night I went out with Justin and some of his work buddies. I was the only person not drinking - I wanted to, but I had to drive home so I was responsible. We went to B-Dub's, where I discovered that their shrimp is actually delicious, at least with BBQ sauce. After that, it was two hours of COSMIC BOWLING. I sucked at it, but it had been two years (really? that long? wow) since I'd last bowled. My team lost every time, unfortunately, but I had fun anyway and got to dance dorkily. And I beat Justin two times out of three!

Molly, I hope the thing you're doing tomorrow is/was successful and not too painful.

Wendy, I think your writing is awesome. Seriously. I loved the stories you posted. And I hope High School Musical 3 doesn't completely drive you mad :)

Bekah, we need to get together over break!

Beth and Erica, have a wonderful Christmas! I hope Lexington is treating you well. I love my butterfly, it's on my mirror. And those stories were some of the most inspirational I've ever had the pleasure to read, Beth. They brought tears to my eyes and warmed the cockles of my heart.

"These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish."

( Seriously, how can you not have read some of these? )