Note to self:

Next year don't sit next to Shelly at communion.

We got the giggles twice. It was bad.

It was raining and windy outside and she asked me, "is that rain?" To which I replied, "no it's a bunch of little men in hobnailed boots running across the roof." It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Then as we were singing the last song I cracked a high note pretty bad and we started laughing again. *sigh* So much for communion being a solemn, thought provoking event.

What a day!

Today was a crazy day in lab.... we were working with sodium hydride which is highly flammable. Some of it ended up in the solid waste can in the hood with all of the solvent and chemical waste containers. It caught on fire and blew the top off of the can. Thankfully the TA's put it out before the other solvent waste containers went up in flames.

So then I was paranoid and practically wiped down my entire hood with Isopropal alcohol just in case. :) My reaction went well, it turned lots of pretty colors! It started out green and then turned dark purple and then lavender (I thought of Heidi). After I added sodium hydride it turned orange and then it finally went back to a lovely blue-green color. The one color I didn't want to see today was light blue in my solvent trap.

We keep air out of the reaction by performing it under vacuum, which pulls the solvent off of the sample. It's hard on the vacuum pumps to have solvent running through them, so we collect it by freezing it with liquid nitrogen in a trap. Liquid nitrogen is capable of condensing oxygen (light blue) if you let air get into you vacuum lines. Well, the vacuum seal on my trap must not have been working right because when I went to clean up I saw light blue in my trap.

O man, so scary. They had to go get a blast shield. Ahhh. Our poor TA's. So then when I got home I kept hearing sirens; every time I thought that they must be headed to Noyes. One of my TA's is in one of my other classes... tomorrow... eeeshh. That'll be fun.

We had CW singing practice/ singing at our house tonight. It was fun. At one point some of us went over to 711 and duct taped Blake to his chair because he didn't come over. They were waiting with buckets of water when we came back, but I escaped the wetness. :)

Last night Washington people came to visit and go to church at the Union. It was a great time! So good to have visitors- and I was amazed at the W-ton turnout. Most of them don't branch out much, and by much I mean ever. We went to the Shaker afterwards for singing and snack and random fun after our guests left. :)

I'm going home tomorrow to get measured and to sing and for communion. It's going to be a crazy weekend. But I'm excited.

Mexico

Some highlights:

• seeing Brent and Janelle and Carissa
• singing in church in Spanish
• 'sneaking' into Mexico
• seeing the kids again
• spending quality time with U of I people
• having my brother along
• the warm weather
• driving from Tucson to Albuquerque; it was cloudy and not windy- I love the open road!
• the quote book
• teasing Joanna
• being sick
• the beautiful stars

Some not so highlights:

• feeling old ;)
• seeing my chicken salad sandwich twice
• the spiders
• not getting to go to town
• feeling like we were missing a few people... such is life
• getting an entire backhoe loader bucket full of water dumped on me *grin* o wait, that was fun? too bad it wasn't even sunny out!
• all my smelly wet laundry

For the record, my dad always told us not to stand under raised loader buckets or grain trucks when their lifts were all the way up- it's dangerous and they could fall. So I was disobedient and I guess it's my own fault. :) When I heard the bucket start to move I thought the whole thing was coming down so I ran and tripped and the rest is history I guess. It was a beautiful prank, props to the rock crew for that!

I'm back

It was a good trip. Too short though of course. So now I'm back to the real world.

I have a lot of dirty smelly things in my room. I did my nastiest laundry at the Shaker with Matt last night after I got back, but my shoes are still wet and muddy. How they got wet and muddy is a story and a half. :) I'll post video of that eventually. So I finally got my cordless drill and stud finder back (since it wasn't working out so well at the Shaker *grin*)... and the next RJ... and made matt's bed and folded his laundry and watched a movie because their dryer takes forever. O well. Good bonding time or something like that.

After church Meg and Jer and I went to singing at the nursing home. For supper the handful of people who were in town had a very random picnic of fried chicken, leftover church lunch sandwiches, quesadillas, deviled eggs, grapes, leftover Mexico snacks... it was good times. Then we went to Custard cup.

I should be studying for my vocab test tomorrow... but I don't want to.

My Roomies

Are pretty much amazing. :) Some of the coolest girls you will ever meet. There are ten of us, we have two *small* bathrooms, and we still get along!


Meg is our resident chef and dietitian. She keeps herself very busy- most of the time when I see her she's off to work/class/study/random food club. :) The coolest thing about Meg is the way she lets her light shine-you can see Christ in her smile.












Ashley and Jenny are sisters, probably why they look alike. :) I don't see Jenny much at all, which is too bad. Ash is engaged to Chris, who lives next door and is our eleventh room mate. They're lots of fun to be around, especially when they're cooking dinner together at our house. (It's huh-larious)













Kristen just moved in with us in January. When our tenth roommate fell through at the beginning of the school year we didn't know why.... now we do! I love listening to her wonderful piano playing abilities and singing along to the Phantom of the Opera with her. I love it that she's always ready for crazy fun stuff like building snow sisters in the yard at midnight. Or just hanging out into the wee hours of the night. :)












Then there's Amber. Amber is one of those indispensable farm girl types. She can do just about anything, even though she is an AC girl and we all know that they can't throw a ball. ;) She has lots of plants and flowers in our house which is so great. Amber's always up for doing something fun, which sadly enough doesn't usually involve organic chem or falling through the floor with the shower.












Alyssa's engaged.... Ryan's getting an amazing girl! My favorite quote from Lys is, "You like lemon!? Ryan, that is so great! I LOVE lemon!" *Grin* She works so hard and does such a good job as yg secretary... and always with such a sweet smile. I love it how her face lights up when she talks about Jesus.... and Ryan. :)













When I'm in the mood for crazy random fun I go to Sarah. She's great at movie sound effects and talking about everything from current events to how hilarious it would be if the leaky shower suddenly plunged through the basement floor with somebody in it. :D I love it that she likes the names of my classes, ie solid state structural analysis. We almost had a class together but then of course she changed her schedule. :)













Amanda is lots of fun. She always has interesting stories from working at a nursing home... (they quite often end with me saying, "reason number 629 why I am not going to be a nurse."). I love it how she always tells it like it is and doesn't mince any words. I'm so glad I got the chance to live with her this year, it just wouldn't have been quite so much fun.













Gabrielle.... I used to be so innocent. *Grin* Actually, I think that I have surprised her more in the last two years than she has me. Gab is great. She's always up for hashing things out and going for walks at CIRCE and talking on IM from across the hall. And making me open my iTunes so she can listen to Johnny Cash. Gab keeps me accountable... I'm so blessed to have had her as a roomie.












So there you have it... I really can't do justice to these girls- they're the BEST!
Proverbs 27:17

I'm leaving for Mexico in a few hours... I'm a little excited!!!

3.14159

Yesterday was pi day. At our house we celebrated by baking a bunch of pie and having the yg over after church. I love pie. It was really good. And, we have lots of leftovers which makes me very happy.

Spring break starts tomorrow! I'm excited.

My life is pretty uneventful right now

We had a singing at 709 last Thursday and then I went to Merry Ann's until 2 with some of my roomies.

I babysat for a non- family member for the first time in my life Friday. Trevor slept for an hour and then he bawled for his mom for an hour and a half. And Gab and Karen laughed at me.

Bright and early Saturday morning I went to package soap in Indiana with the Washington yg. I wasn't looking forward to it, but it ended up being tons of fun. It helped that Laura was as wound up as I was. :) We came up with some fun stuff to do at Luke and Heidi's wedding...too bad I'm too chicken to try any of them.

My car needs an oil change so I left it at home. It was kind of tight in Matt's truck since Fred came too. We're leaving for Mexico on Friday!! I'm so excited! I'm looking forward to the sun and the food the most I think. :)

I have a midterm tomorrow that I should be studying for. Hooray for Solid State Structural Analysis.

Spring Ice Out

Or in. :)

So I had a lazy weekend. Nothing too exciting happened. Joanna got announced to some guy from Ohio and she'll move away and I'll never see her again, but I'm really, really happy for her. :D

O, I did go canoeing with my dad and my sister. On the same ditch/field that we go ice skating on. It was really fun, even with the wind and the snow. I stole Jakey's work boots just in case I had to bail out into the not very deep water. Hooray for crazy fun times on the farm. :)

Dad and Shelly.

The canoe is still broke, but it wasn't taking on water.

Dad and I in the snow.

Shelly and I fighting the wind.