So this week has been quite an eventful one the country hasn't it? I heard on the news that 49 out of the 50 United States received some amount of snow in one way or another this week. Hawaii was the only one who didn't. I read somewhere that DC had, what, 39 inches of snow? My uncle who lives in the middle of Penn. said they got 27 inches on one day! And one cousin who goes to school in Maryland near DC said they ended up getting a snow week instead of a snow day! They had Friday the 5th off for the first wave and then just proceeded to get one day after another the next week until his school just shut down for the rest of the week! A pre-spring break break. Geez.... :)

Let's see, we had school last Friday but classes on Saturday were cancelled which, unfortunately, didn't benefit me at all but it was nice for those students who do dread Saturday classes. Then Monday we all crossed our fingers for snow and get a snow day and fortunately enough we did! Then Wednesday we weren't sure what would happen but we did get a delay until Noon so I got to miss four classes over that period and one practicum opportunity. Once we did get out onto the roads, they really weren't that bad and I was happy that we got a small break nonetheless.

Of course that meant bright and early on Thursday morning I had to get back into the swing of things and actually make an effort to try to get back to normal. Hard to do when you sat around doing nothing for almost 48 hours straight. I can only imagine how my cousin feels on his snow week. I also heard that we are supposed to get another 2-4 inches on Sunday night into Monday morning so maybe another snow day...? :) Wouldn't that just screw everything up. Most places are closed on Monday already for Presidents' Day but the Mount will be open for classes and whatnot so if we do get a snow day that'll benefit us but no one else really. lol :)

I started my practicum last Monday, before all the snow, and I had a great first experience there but then they had no school on Wednesday and they have no school for the holiday on Monday so I'm missing another two opportunities to go so I'm not sure at this rate if I'll get in my 50 hours or not. I'm sure I can find other times and dates to go but Mondays and Wednesdays just work best. But we'll see... It's just hard to have a routine down, get something introduced, then have weather interrupt everything everywhere, and then trying to get back into it. I really don't like. If the federal government can get a snow day, shouldn't the whole country get off as well? Thank you Ellen for that comment. :) Love that show! lol

But we have our Mid Semester break on this coming Friday and that'll be nice to have a scheduled break, not that we really need it considering the break we just had in the middle of the week. We'll see how it goes though. :) I really want to go visit a friend at UD either that weekend or the next when she has her mid break but I'm not sure when it'll work out, if it does at all. But I hope so. :)

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, or as Sam calls it "Singles Awareness Day." lol That's just when we need to put all the singles together and then they won't be single anymore! lol The guy I've been seeing has something planned that day for us but he won't tell me what it is so I'm in for a surprise. I'm not really into surprises so I'm not sure how I'll react. lol But to you all, Happy Valentine's Day in advance. :) Hope its a fun pink and white day! <3

having a snow day did end up turning in to me being sick so my week hasn't exactly been as productive as i'd prefer. however, today as the beginning of my weekend, i've read a lot of www.mlia.com pots and they have definitely given me some interesting ideas of how we college students can bring out the kid again whenever we're snowed in: and this is what i'm planning on doing tonight. build a dorm room fort. yes i said it. a fort. when is the last time you built a fort? that is my challenge tonight with my friends; to gather together as many blankets and pillows as possible and combine the furniture pieces to legit.  build a college dorm room fort. so this brings research. yea i'm still in college so i want to be educational on the matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPDdws6-GMg

now the music in this video slightly brings back the style of the 90's but i'm expecting something more. i'm talking backstreet boys and nysnc and perhaps even the spice girls. don't judge! well off to my childhood adventure. i will venture back in the near future to share my fasinating tale :-D

so getting snow days in college is definitely worth experiencing. waking up on a tuesday (worst part of the week) at 7am to get ready for a full day of classes is never entertaining to me. however, waking up at 7am and discovering a text sent at 6am that the college is closed for a snow day is always entertaining!

so what did i do next? i went back to bed! only to wake up in time for some lunch with friends. it was then that we turned in to little kids again and started planning our schemes for the day [[snowmen, snow angels, igloos, sledding, snow ball fight, etc.]] unfortunately this didn't totally work out as i had hoped because my body decided it didn't like the cold and in turn give me a cough and cold. not fun! but that didn't take away from our indoor plans. the rest of the night, however, included a whole lot of disney [+dreamworks]. we watched shrek 1 and 2, played disney scene it, as well as put together my disney panorama puzzle.

successful day? i think so!

Hey everyone! Saying hello at the end of our school’s first snow day!

Sorry for writing you all so late. It’s after midnight over here! My day off wasn’t really all that much of a day off for me. I used it to put in a lot of extra time on a graphics project that’s gonna be due soon, and it’s a good thing I decided to work ahead. The project is a poster, and I decided to make my own letterforms for the header, and it turned out to be a great deal harder than I originally thought it was going to be. Between yesterday and today I’ve probably spent around 15 hours on the project, and that’s only on a draft!

Snow days at the Mount are cool, but kind of confining. The food court is closed, the Harrington center and the gym close very early, and the only source of food on campus is the dining hall, which is only open specific hours.  So between those times, you have to occupy yourself (Which I did with homework).  But there’s more people stuck on campus than you would normally encounter, so good luck finding an open pool table!

Anyway, this snow day wasn’t really a day off for me, as I had to spend it working VERY HARD on homework. I hope we get a snow day tomorrow too. One because I’d love the day off.  Two, because I had to run out tonight to grab some groceries…and the roads were bad. Like really bad! I don’t want my classmates from Indiana to have to drive through that!

Anyway, happy snow days, drive safe, and have fun!

Hello there. First off want to say happy white-winter-wonderland day to everyone. As most everyone in the greater Cincinnati area is aware, the dreaded "WHITE DEATH" has struck our area again, giving us a break from classes for a day. It is kind of nice being off, but boring as well. What exactly does a college student do on their snow day? Well.......

There are quite a few options, but one of the most common ones is to catch up on sleep and homework that should have been done last night (hey, that's part of college, right?).  Of course I was thrilled when I got the automated phone message this morning at 5:56 AM saying that the college was closed for the day, but that was quickly wiped away by some panic. WHAT IF THE DINING HALL WASN'T OPEN?!?!  The thought of a snow day without food makes any college student cringe.  Luckily our devoted food services director Greg Kathman was there to save the day. I think there are very few times that I don't see him running around the dining hall getting things done for us, that includes weekends. Alright, that was a little off-topic and a small shameless plug but I had to stick it in nonetheless. There are so many people like Mr. Kathman around here who really work hard to make the residence life at MSJ move smoothly. Anyways, luckily we had hot food and despite the college technically being "closed", everything seemed to be normal around lunchtime. 

Now, once the hunger situation has been taken care of, the options of this "free day" really seem to open up. I sat with my roommate and pondered what ever could we do? I heard distant laughter and screams coming from outside the window, and when I went to take a peek I realized there was no other option. Sledding. Yes, sledding. Despite the fact that we are all adults who are busy with jobs and studying hard, snow days give us an opportunity to break out and let our inner-child(ren?) play for a day. Last year, as I remember, the dining hall was getting ready to go trayless, and during one of the snow days they handed out the plastic blue lunch trays to students to use as sleds. This was wildly popular all over campus.  Unfortunately I don't have my tray from last year, however my roommate has come prepared with sleds in the back of her car.

So, I thought I would just share with you all my admittance that yes, even in college snow days are a time for fun. 

I got the most random, or at least I thought it was random, text from my mother on Tuesday morning at 5:15 AM. It said: "School's out for summer! (I mean snow) School's out forever! (I mean today)" And I had no idea what was going on until I got a call at 5:20 AM saying that school was cancelled for the day for a snow day! That's when I rolled over and looked at the quad- it was beautifully covered in white snow! lol It was awesome! No school!

And Wednesday was originally set to be delayed until classes that start at 6 PM but then the college decided at about 12 PM on Wednesday to cancel school all day so that meant two snow days!

Then of course, Thursday meant that most of the snow was cleared off and we had a two hour delay and classes started at 10 AM. It was still awesome to get such an unexpected break!

My mom's and brother's breaks were much better, they both had a 2 hour delay on Monday and then had the following 4 days off! They got a whole week of rest! Of course, though, Alex wouldn't say that since he had to shovel snow for 4 days instead lol but that's what you get for living at home lol. :)

But now it's Monday and we've gotten back to school and it's all piling up now that we've missed those two and a half days. Projects, papers, playing catch up, and general school activities are just attacking me and trying to get my butt moving but it's not working very well... I'm still just being generally lazy.... lol :) Like writing this blog instead of reading the 50 pages for my Wednesday morning class but I guess I should work on it instead of lolly-gagging... so off to hit the books! Enjoy the snow and be careful driving around! :)

Now we're heading into our third week at school and life has been busssyyy!!! lol :) I have been going to all my classes, starting up my participation in clubs and events again, and trying to keep everything in check. Classes are alright so far, don't know how I'm going to survive all the projects and service hours required in almost all the classes, but I'll manage some how.

CAB is taking up a lot of my time, more so than last semester. Every week practically this semester we have at least one event so each has a lot of publicity that I gotta take care and make flyers for and hang up (well, I just make them. The event planner actually gets to make the copies and hang them up lol). But that should be a lot of fun!

The muscial is starting up too! "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" just released its' cast list this week:

JOSEPH:

Tom Frey

NARRATORS:

Mary Beth Heyl

Kelsey Schneider

Samantha Stapleton

BROTHERS INCLUDE: Laura Ausdenmoore; Beth Brunsman; Marc George; Chad Grooms; Jon Grote; Heather Kailholz; Anthony Miles; Lydia Taulbee; Jeff Ward

JACOB: Kyle Smith

WIVES INCLUDE: Candice Bleh; Bridget Kent; Debbie Nieman; Megan Pena; Siobhan Ryan; Sondra West

POTIPHAR: Eric McCarter

MRS. POTIPHAR/WIFE: Kelly Loukinas

BAKER: Ursula Biron

GUARD/ISHMAELITE: Chike Ndulue

so that should be interesting when that really starts moving. I'm hoping to be a part of props again like last year. Last year I was props master, but with three night classes this semester, it might be harder to do that again so we'll see what happens.

But it's all good so far. Just hanging out with friends, catching up with others, making new friends. It's all part of the college experience I guess and I'm having a blast through it all! Speaking of snow, too, itwas just snowing for three hours and the streets have yet to be cleaned off so maybe if we're lucky, no school tomorrow but I'm sure it'll be a long stretch but we can always keep hoping can't we? lol :)

The biggest snowfall in 40 years said the weather man. I knew going on Thursday night that there was a calling for snow, but when I woke up on Friday of a knocking on my door my first thought was that I overslept for practice. No, I didn’t over sleep. My roommate woke me up to tell me that if I didn’t have classes that I better get on the road to get home.

I looked at my clock and then looked out the window, I couldn’t even see the sidewalks in the quad…it was one big snow field. I thought sarcastically, “This is just great.” A little bit later, the Emergency alert system notified me that the campus was closing down at noon. I had to make the choice and I decided it would be safer not to go to my 11:00 class because if I didn’t get out on the road to home then it would be a much harder venture later. I took some things down to my car (I immediately regretted not taking my car to the parking garage the night before). So I went to drop off something to my professor for the 11:00 class to cover my basis. I came back to the car and it was covered again. I was on my way.

What normally takes me 30 minutes to get home ended up taking over an hour. The problem getting out of Delhi is that there’s no route that doesn’t have a steep hill. So I picked and chose, trying to zig-zag the safest way home. I reached home and stopped in front of my driveway just looking at the snow that had started to pile up like the trash seems to in our room. I then proceeded to go down the street, turned around, pulled up and parked on the curb. I realized I needed to go ahead and be the good kid I am and shovel the driveway so that it wouldn’t be harder to shovel later. The shoveling took me about an hour. I finished and turned around and what I had just slaved over getting cleared had begun to pile up in the time I turned my back to it. Again, “This is just great.” So I quickly skimmed off the half inch of snow that had accumulated and pulled my car in the driveway.

It’s Saturday evening and I’ve yet to go back out yet. I open my front door and all I see a street of gingerbread-esque houses. I’ve spent the last two days watching movies and I even forced myself to get two papers done today. You have to kick back and relax, even though it’s not like I could get anyways if I had wanted to, but at the same time I had to use my time productively. Who knows, maybe we’ll be blessed with more snow on Monday and the campus will close again! ☺

Okay... so I have no real topic for this blog other than to keep you up to date on my life at the Mount!      Hahaha! Seeing the smiley face makes me laugh! See, we just had a new blogger training session because we changed our site so that means our blogging formats have changed. So now we have new smiley faces and new fonts and new formats! It's quite interesting actually... But enough of that…

So… what else is new? Um… Oklahoma is still up and running and going well. I haven’t been to a practice in a bit but it’s all good- I’m going next week. Tom got dropped the other night apparently. He and Chad Grooms (they play Curly and Jud respectfully) were working on a fight scene that was choreographed for them but during the process of Chad picking Tom up to fling him over his shoulder, he dropped Tom and I don’t think it turned out well… Oh well… He’s doing better now so hopefully the show will continue as planned and just as well as normal.   

So we had snow today! I woke up this morning at 8 AM and it was barely snowing- and barely accumulating on the ground. By the time I left at 9 AM, not much had changed. I drove to school from 275 West to 471 North and that’s when it started to get worse. The snow was starting to stick to the ground and making it a little trickier to drive in. It wasn’t so much the roads that were bad but trying to see in the snow- that was annoying.  

I got to school and it was snowing harder and by the middle of my 10 AM class, it was getting really bad and I couldn’t stay at school if I wanted to get home okay. My second class at 11 AM was cancelled but I didn’t know that when I left at 10:45 AM. It took my an hour to get home- and as you know it only takes me 25 minutes usually- and the fastest I went was 45 mph and that was on the highway. I’ve never gone 15 mph down Delhi before… That was interesting… 

So that was the interesting Friday I had… It’s still snowing pretty good at 2:30 PM right now… And my mom just got home- she’s a teacher at Mercer- and she said the roads were fine until she got to our driveway. Oddly enough, she slid coming up our driveway. I can see the tracks outside and she really went off the driveway- she had to get traction by going into what should have been grass next to the driveway- but it’s all covered in snow.

Other than that… Tomorrow was supposed to be Get Acquainted Day and it was supposed to be a day in which transfer students and high school seniors would be able to spend the day at the Mount taking tours and talking to current students so they can get an idea of what the Mount is about.       I was supposed to be on the student panel for that but not anymore- it’s been cancelled and rescheduled for April 12^th 10 AM-2:30 PM…

So anything else? Um… I don’t think so. I pretty much lead a boring life… No I’m just kidding but this past week has been fast and lacking in details but only one more week to spring break! And I have a fun story to tell you then- so make sure you read then- 2 WEEKS! I need a break… Haha…

The first picture (top left) is my backyard. The second (top right) is my driveway and where my mom slid. The third (bottom left)is the amount of snow on my steps. And the last (bottom right) is the amount of snow on the ground- a bit over 3 inches.

Okay… so snow right?! I love it! But there always seems to be a problem with driving in it. It just seems like other people don’t know how to drive it. I remember a few times where other drivers make my drive horrible… 

There was this one time last semester, when we got the real first snow of the winter, let’s see, it was… Well, I don’t remember- it may have been the first real bad rain (we had had a mini-drought over the summer) and it took me an hour and 15 minutes! Just to get to school from my house! And that drive, like I’ve said before, usually only takes me 25 minutes! 

A bit of background on this newest delay in driving: so last week on Tuesday, Feb. 12^th, we had snow so we got a snow day right? And I wrote about that one last week. Then this week, we got snow on Wednesday, Feb. 20^th, but it was early enough that a snow day wasn’t called. But I normally leave the house at 9 AM to get to class at 10 AM SOC class. Well, there was so much snow still at 8 AM when I woke up, so I decided that I wasn’t going to go school because I did not feel comfortable driving in the snow that particular morning. (But it didn’t matter that much that I wasn’t going to my two classes because my first class at 10 AM got cancelled so I only missed the second one- HIS class.) 

Then, as I heard about the snow that was coming this evening (Thursday, Feb. 21^st) and I was already at school… I went to my 10 AM COM class but my 12:45 PM PSY class was cancelled (I have no idea why LOL). So I only had my 2:15 PM MTH class. But I wasn’t feeling well so I went home before 2 PM… 

And it’s a good thing I did leave early! It started snowing when I was leaving and by the time my friends all left school before 4 PM, it was really snowing and covering EVERYTHING! It was actually really pretty and really quiet… But it took Alex an hour and 15 minutes to get home (and her drive is only 45 minutes usually). And my friend Ali took an hour to get home when that drive is usually only 25 minutes, just like mine! 

It is now 7:15 PM when I am writing this, so it’s been snowing for about 5 hours and now it’s started to rain ice/hail so that’s not good… And the streets aren’t clear at all! I would NOT want to be driving in it at all right now! I worry for my brother who has to drive home from work in this at 8:30 PM tonight… 

So, overall, what I’m trying to say about all of this is that when you drive everyday to and from school, you have to learn when it’s safe to drive and when it’s not. On the day I decided not to go to school, that was my decision and it was the right one. I did not risk driving in the snow and it was better that way. Plus, my brother and I went out a built a snowman! We had so much doing it! I haven’t built one in years! It was great… So… bad snow + driving = bad situation. So make the right decision before driving in the snow when you don’t have to… But if you stay in, build a snowman! Haha…!