An addendum to the transportation fiasco

So Sunday night when I was on my way to my dorm at school, I was sitting there, feeling sorry for myself about everything that had gone wrong.  But then, all of a sudden, I realized that although lots of things had gone wrong, there were good things that had happened too.  The fiasco was an opportunity for lots of people to bless me and help me when I needed them.  James, Ashley, Chris, Sam, my parents, my aunt Kathy, Caleb, even the usually grumpy ladies at the bus station.  All of these people were able to show me love in this sucky situation, and even though things were annoying, I was still able to give thanks.  Which is pretty amazing.  God is pretty amazing, even though I forget sometimes.

I've got a gal in Kalamazoo! (Several, in fact)

So I'm back at school again. I had to leave my gals, Emily, Kiersten, and Abby, back in Kalamazoo. (Was that the proper application of commas? Or should I have used a semi-colon or two? I'm not sure what the proper punctuation for that sentence was.) And I already miss them, because they're fabulous and make me feel fantastic. I'm so blessed to have such good friends, even if I can only see them not-very-often. I got back to my dorm after another Thanksgiving dinner and put up some Christmas decorations. Which makes me happy. But I need to go buy more. I don't have enough Christmas lights. At all. And I have seven more minutes left in today, so I'm just going to leave it at that. Sorry. You will(might) get more tomorrow. I wish I would promise that, but I have a test and a final draft of a paper due on Tuesday. So I'm not sure how much extra time I'll have tomorrow.

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving. The time to sit down, eat copious amounts of food, and give thanks. So, in that spirit, I'm going to write a blog post about some of the things I'm thankful for. And I'm starting this early, so I'll be able to post it before I leave for my Aunt and Uncle's house. So here it goes. In no particular order.

Music. I'm very thankful that I'm able to sit here, with music coming out of my computer speakers as I type this. I'm thankful that I have so much music that I love, and so much music that reminds me of other times and other moods. I'm thankful that I'm going to get Charlie's CD in a week or two. I might get so excited about it that I also buy a digital copy, with an itunes gift card I have. I'm thankful about that. I'm thankful that I was able to go see the Weepies and that I have their new CD. I'm thankful that my dad plays many musical instruments, and that he's playing his trumpet right now.

Family. I'm very thankful for my family. I'm thankful that these are the people I'm related to, my mom and dad, my brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins' kids, cousins' boy/girlfriends. These are my people, and I love them so much. I'm very happy that I get to see some of them today.

Food. I'm super thankful for all the delicious food that I'm going to consume today. Also all the varied food with all sorts of flavors and spices that comes from all over the country, if not the world. I'm so lucky that I live in America in this century, where we have such an abundance and variety of food.

Friends. I'm so so thankful for my friends. I really don't know how I would have survived high school without you guys. I love all of my friends so much and am so grateful that I got the privilege of knowing you guys. I knew that I can trust you with anything, and that you'll still love me. Thanks for being there for me.

God. Words cannot even describe how thankful I am to God and how grateful I am for everything he's done for me. Just yesterday I was in the Family Christian Bookstore with my mom, because she wanted to pick up a CD, and I wandered over to the bible section. I wanted to buy a Message bible, because I couldn't find the copy that James gave me a long time ago. All of the ones I found were super expensive, so I gave up. But when I got to the counter with something else I found (it's a surprise for you people who go to New Day. You'll see on Sunday), I noticed a copy of the Message below the counter with a bunch of other stuff. The clerk said that everything there was five dollars. So I got my new version of the bible, and it was totally God. Plus, he's done so much for me, and I'm eternally grateful for him. He saved me, and not only that, but he continues to save me. And he loves me. I'm so thankful for God.

Books. I'm so very thankful for books. They're amazing, and I love them so much.

Movies. Similarly, I really enjoy movies and I'm so thankful that they exist and that I have the resources to buy them so I can watch my favorites whenever I want.

My roommate. I'm very thankful that Maggie is my roommate. We get along great, and are friends. We make each other laugh and enjoy living with each other. I miss her when I don't see her for a few days. Basically, I really lucked out in the roommate situation. Except it wasn't luck. It was God. Thanks God!

The list goes on and on. I'm so thankful for everything! Well, not everything. Just most things.

On being home and other occurrences

So I'm still home, haven't yet left for my Aunt and Uncles house to eat copious amounts of turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes. It's been a rather relaxing day, and I didn't get all that much done today, which I'm okay with. I also started watching Glee again, so I spent about an hour and a half catching up with the last two episodes. I'd forgotten how much I love some of the characters. I also went shopping, and picked up a few holiday decorations for my dorm room. I'm mondo excited about Christmas. I love all the lights and decorations and seeing my family. I'm also excited about Thanksgiving, tomorrow. I love my family, and even though James and Ashley are not going to be there, it will be fun. I'm going to see James tonight, actually, before he and Ashley leave tomorrow morning for Minnesota. I'm glad. I really do love my big brother James. And my big brother Jesse as well, but it's a little different because they're two different people. But family is the best.

Thanksgiving!

I'm so pumped about Thanksgiving. I'll get to see my family, and eat delicious food, and be around my family, and not worry about schoolwork. I'll be able to go shopping and buy Christmas decorations and everything! I'm excited! I'm also sleepy right now, so I'm going to add a thing that's been appearing on Facebook, so this will be longer.

I've read 34 of these, and started 5.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

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 Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

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 - A.A. 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 Inferno - Dante

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 - E.B. 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 - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo