Thursday, March 24, 2011
So, basically I didn't sleep at all, all night, which was probably not good. I've been working on this awful term paper for almost fourteen hours straight, with a couple of TV breaks last evening between eight and ten (lasting about an hour total), a break to blog about it at 1:30 a.m., a break to work on my urban design paper at around 3 a.m., and a coffee break about 20 minutes ago. What have I accomplished in that elevenish hours that have been dedicated to the term paper? About five hundred words…out of the thousand I needed to write…. What's really hysterical is I'm not even angry or frustrated or depressed or feeling an urge to burst into tears, which is normally the reaction this would have induced from me about three hours ago. I am still completely determined to slog through and finish the blasted thing. Even though I don't know what I'm going to put in the two pages I have to fill up before I have to leave the house in two and a half hours. I have absolutely no idea at all. Maybe I'm still sort of emotionally stable because I know that for once this is not all my fault for being a moron and procrastinating. It isn't my fault, so logically/fairly speaking, I can't suffer consequences for my bad judgment. Hm. I have no idea if that's true (it probably isn't) but that's probably how my subconscious is keeping me alive and focused on this right now. I am really, really going to regret having stayed up to finish this vitally important paper by the time I hit humanities class at two this afternoon. I might have to go on a caffeine marathon all day, which I've never even done. I am really grateful my exam is poli-sci 101 and not 201 today. I'm working very hard not to be pessimistic about it. My goodness, I wonder how much of this post is even relatively sane. College is not my friend right now. I hope too much of this post isn't redundant with the post I wrote five and a half hours ago when it was quiet and gloomy and I was wondering if I could get away with running the espresso maker at whatever-wee-hour-of-the-morning 15 feet away from my parents' bedroom door. (I decided not to try. I was feeling astonishingly lucid all night, considering how exhausted I have every right to be.)
Dear coherency: it was nice knowing you. Farewell. Do come again.
It is one in the morning. Surprisingly, I feel somewhat less awful than I typically do in this same situation—especially considering that this situation is worse than most situations of the sort. And more infuriating, because it's not all my fault this time. It is one in the morning. Before nine this morning, I have to write another 800 words, minimum, on my term paper, and I don't have enough source material. (This is just " the draft". It's a good thing, because it is going to be a disorganized shambles.) My thesis is that, despite being rooted in theological controversy, the Great Schism of 1054 had significant political and cultural effects on Byzantine Constantinople. (When I said last fall in some blog post that I would love to research Byzantine history, I really meant it. Ha.) True, I put off starting this paper about two weeks later than I really should have, but I have done much worse (e.g., last semester, when I did my entire term project—topic, research, and writing (for the same professor, no less)—in three days). And I have been hard at work researching and outlining it for the past two weeks. Yet, it's still incredibly in disarray. I might just end up churning out 2500 words of relative claptrap, thereby at least snagging most of the 30% of my grade this is worth, and completely rehauling it for the final draft, which I will have three weeks to prepare.
I also have to write a 600-word paper on principles of "livability" and "mobility" in urban design *gag reflex* as a response to a 40-page reading assignment of which I have yet to read 10 pages. I worked on this reading assignment last Thursday night and Sunday, as well as yesterday and today. I have no idea how I managed not to get the writing even started.
Correction—I DO know how this happened! I was asked out on a date on Friday by a guy who could actually make a semi-plausible boyfriend (for once; he's the third guy to ask me out and the first two were Majorly Creepy Old Guys). I will most likely blog more about him 'n' stuff later. Suffice it to say that I freaked out over this completely unexpected (and possibly unwanted) development in my life and got absolutely nothing done on Friday, and very little done on Saturday—the only free days I have in a week. Thus, I have been scrambling to catch up in the free hours of my church- and class- and nap-filled days ever since, and I have been alternating between miserable and rather proud of myself, since I have managed to overcome my procrastination habits pretty consistently all week, which may be a first for me. It's like crunch time, except that instead of lasting one or two or three days, crunch time has been lasting for a week and counting.
On a high note, l spent more than an hour doing devotions this morning, which was gloriously rejuvenating. I need to do this more often. (Even on a smaller scale. Someone hold me to this, please.)
I really hope I'm not too fatigued tomorrow morning to do well on the government exam I've barely had the chance to study for…
I also have to write a 600-word paper on principles of "livability" and "mobility" in urban design *gag reflex* as a response to a 40-page reading assignment of which I have yet to read 10 pages. I worked on this reading assignment last Thursday night and Sunday, as well as yesterday and today. I have no idea how I managed not to get the writing even started.
Correction—I DO know how this happened! I was asked out on a date on Friday by a guy who could actually make a semi-plausible boyfriend (for once; he's the third guy to ask me out and the first two were Majorly Creepy Old Guys). I will most likely blog more about him 'n' stuff later. Suffice it to say that I freaked out over this completely unexpected (and possibly unwanted) development in my life and got absolutely nothing done on Friday, and very little done on Saturday—the only free days I have in a week. Thus, I have been scrambling to catch up in the free hours of my church- and class- and nap-filled days ever since, and I have been alternating between miserable and rather proud of myself, since I have managed to overcome my procrastination habits pretty consistently all week, which may be a first for me. It's like crunch time, except that instead of lasting one or two or three days, crunch time has been lasting for a week and counting.
On a high note, l spent more than an hour doing devotions this morning, which was gloriously rejuvenating. I need to do this more often. (Even on a smaller scale. Someone hold me to this, please.)
I really hope I'm not too fatigued tomorrow morning to do well on the government exam I've barely had the chance to study for…
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Also, Matt Smith as the Doctor contains an awful lot of epic win.
(Saw the first two episodes of Season 5, at long last. Made me slightly less disconsolate about the end of David Tennant's tenure, which contained a possibly nonpareil amount of utter awesome.)
Monday sucks. / Birthday. / Monikers. / Birthday surprise!
I refuse to start this post with an excuse for why I haven't blogged in almost a month, so I won't. (Partially because I don't have one, but mainly because they're obnoxious and unoriginal, unless it's a really good one. And typically they aren't, I think.)
This past Monday seems to have been fairly universally horrid. (Monday is usually begging to have someone light a match to it and laugh maniacally as it burns, but this one was particularly awful.) It was big and bad and ugly for our immediate family for reasons I cannot presently expound upon on the Internet, but prayer for all of us would be welcome. I found out tonight that someone very special to my grandma died on Monday (which was also her birthday, in a twist of bitter irony). And a lot of my friends posted Facebook statuses about generally suckish things that were happening to them on Monday. Though Hannah appeared to have a fun self-revelation on Monday, which is always exciting. But mostly, Monday was really terrifically not terrific, and I've been trying to sort out the rest of my week bit by bit since then. AUGH. At least classwise, 'tis nearly done.
I am so sad that I didn't do a birthday post on the 8th. i was going to do like a little journal-y thing with bits if things that happened and were observed by me throughout the day, and a screenshot of the birthday wishes email I got from YourPants.com, and it was uber cool, but then it was 6 minutes too late by the time I realized I hadn't actually posted it and I was kind of devastated.
So! I have named my laptop at last! Its name is Asfaloth. That's the name of Glorfindel's white horse in the Fellowship of the Ring. (For any non-book-devotees reading this, it was Arwen that rode Asfaloth in the movie, taking Frodo to Rivendell.) That's one Accomplishment of Awesome achieved! I need to go through my list and update what I have and have not accomplished…I know i've accomplished at least 4 or 5 (barely a dent in my 74 1/2 items, I know) and failed one…Anywho.
My bamboo plant: Spritely Fetch-the-Battle-Axe Takemoko. I think. The first name is still under debate (yes, it's supposed to be irony). I'm thinking about something more Asian, possibly. Or an obscure, long, and thus awesome adjective. But I definitely like the last name and the middle addendum.
Oh, and my friends threw me a surprise party last week. Which was AMAZING. Because I've wanted a surprise party since around the age of 11 (8ish years), but I didn't say anything about it, because, you know, my parents wouldn't remember that idea long-term and they couldn't use it the same year or it wouldn't be a surprise. (Just the way parents work. Or, mine do.) (They did throw me one when I turned six, but it scared me and I ran and hid in a kitchen cupboard instead of being social, like you're supposed to do at your own birthday parties.) The Sunday before, Gwen and I had actually had a conversation about surprise birthday parties, about which I promptly forgot and thus did not suspect a thing, even when Mom was like , "I have to go run errands at 7 at night!" and then "didn't hear" any of my queries about where we were going. Thus, I was caught very off guard when lots of people leapt out from Adam and Terra's living room furniture and yelled, "SURPRISE!" It has been reported that my face turned purple. We ate lots of tasty party food and watched The Road to El Dorado (just about the best/most quotable movie ever, made before DreamWorks started making crappy live-action films) and lots of Tim Hawkins videos and it was SO MUCH FUN and MY FRIENDS ARE AWESOME, even if all of them couldn't be there.
It made the previous Tuesday, which was my actual birthday, less depressingly anticlimactic, which is most bodacious.
So, it's forty minutes past midnight, and I still need to write a 600-word paper for my humanities class tomorrow. Thusly I bid you all a very fond farewell. (I feel as though this is a quote from a movie in which someone dies immediately after saying that…Hm.)
(Oh—Bilbo Baggins says that right before he leaves the Shire forever. Not really dying. But still a drastic end to his life as he knows it. Possibly good and possibly bad. I sense that I'm about to launch a tangential and philosophical discussion right now, and I really need to not do that right now, so…guten nacht. Maybe I will do this *points upwards* later.)
This past Monday seems to have been fairly universally horrid. (Monday is usually begging to have someone light a match to it and laugh maniacally as it burns, but this one was particularly awful.) It was big and bad and ugly for our immediate family for reasons I cannot presently expound upon on the Internet, but prayer for all of us would be welcome. I found out tonight that someone very special to my grandma died on Monday (which was also her birthday, in a twist of bitter irony). And a lot of my friends posted Facebook statuses about generally suckish things that were happening to them on Monday. Though Hannah appeared to have a fun self-revelation on Monday, which is always exciting. But mostly, Monday was really terrifically not terrific, and I've been trying to sort out the rest of my week bit by bit since then. AUGH. At least classwise, 'tis nearly done.
I am so sad that I didn't do a birthday post on the 8th. i was going to do like a little journal-y thing with bits if things that happened and were observed by me throughout the day, and a screenshot of the birthday wishes email I got from YourPants.com, and it was uber cool, but then it was 6 minutes too late by the time I realized I hadn't actually posted it and I was kind of devastated.
So! I have named my laptop at last! Its name is Asfaloth. That's the name of Glorfindel's white horse in the Fellowship of the Ring. (For any non-book-devotees reading this, it was Arwen that rode Asfaloth in the movie, taking Frodo to Rivendell.) That's one Accomplishment of Awesome achieved! I need to go through my list and update what I have and have not accomplished…I know i've accomplished at least 4 or 5 (barely a dent in my 74 1/2 items, I know) and failed one…Anywho.
My bamboo plant: Spritely Fetch-the-Battle-Axe Takemoko. I think. The first name is still under debate (yes, it's supposed to be irony). I'm thinking about something more Asian, possibly. Or an obscure, long, and thus awesome adjective. But I definitely like the last name and the middle addendum.
Oh, and my friends threw me a surprise party last week. Which was AMAZING. Because I've wanted a surprise party since around the age of 11 (8ish years), but I didn't say anything about it, because, you know, my parents wouldn't remember that idea long-term and they couldn't use it the same year or it wouldn't be a surprise. (Just the way parents work. Or, mine do.) (They did throw me one when I turned six, but it scared me and I ran and hid in a kitchen cupboard instead of being social, like you're supposed to do at your own birthday parties.) The Sunday before, Gwen and I had actually had a conversation about surprise birthday parties, about which I promptly forgot and thus did not suspect a thing, even when Mom was like , "I have to go run errands at 7 at night!" and then "didn't hear" any of my queries about where we were going. Thus, I was caught very off guard when lots of people leapt out from Adam and Terra's living room furniture and yelled, "SURPRISE!" It has been reported that my face turned purple. We ate lots of tasty party food and watched The Road to El Dorado (just about the best/most quotable movie ever, made before DreamWorks started making crappy live-action films) and lots of Tim Hawkins videos and it was SO MUCH FUN and MY FRIENDS ARE AWESOME, even if all of them couldn't be there.
It made the previous Tuesday, which was my actual birthday, less depressingly anticlimactic, which is most bodacious.
So, it's forty minutes past midnight, and I still need to write a 600-word paper for my humanities class tomorrow. Thusly I bid you all a very fond farewell. (I feel as though this is a quote from a movie in which someone dies immediately after saying that…Hm.)
(Oh—Bilbo Baggins says that right before he leaves the Shire forever. Not really dying. But still a drastic end to his life as he knows it. Possibly good and possibly bad. I sense that I'm about to launch a tangential and philosophical discussion right now, and I really need to not do that right now, so…guten nacht. Maybe I will do this *points upwards* later.)
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Break out the party horns! Kiersten finally got around to writing something!
All right. I have been very remiss in blogging—on writing, journaling, vlogging, talking to people, period. Mostly. So I am here to remedy a little of that. Hopefully in a relatively succinct and pithy fashion.
1. Ignition! I want to blog about this eventually. i just can't write a good post about this. I'm sorry.
In a nutshell, lacking spit and polish and articulacy:
Friday night/most of Saturday = general feelings of I've-been-here-I've-done-this-what-am-I-going-to-get-out-of-this-but-emotional-high? Kind of depressing. Great conference, but I felt kind of on the outside, like I juts didn't have any really good reason to be there.
Saturday night = really good message. God also kind of pointed out my "daddy issue" with Him. I cried a little bit. My hands did this weird shaky thing. Chrissy and Emily and a couple of other blurry faces came and prayed for me, and I love them lots and lots and lots. I might have made friends with Erica, which is pretty cool. She's sweet. And I love God. A lot. And He's letting me know that He;s not passive about me. He does care when I miss spending time with Him. He really, really does. And He cares whether I care. Simple, right? I feel like I should feel stupid for not realizing that before, but it was always one of those things that went in one ear and out the other, you know? I never really felt like God loved me so much that he wanted to spend time with me every day. I think I might have had a breakthrough there. *insert interjection for emphasis here* I hope so. And having people pray for me was incredible—because, not by any fault of anyone else's, sometimes I forget that my friends love me too.
I think spending my weekend on a youth retreat was worth it.
2. School. Mostly, I like college. I spend an astronomically smaller percentage of my time now being miserable than I did in high school. But the last month has been insane. It's spring break this week; I'm gad to have a breather. I feel like such a wimp, taking 12 credit hours (which is full-time, but less than the average for an honors student.) (I am so sick of hearing "honors" anything.) and still feeling behind all the time. But I am hanging on. I really need to come up with a topic for my minimum-ten-page humanities paper about an aspect of life in a major urban city. And I need to take this gargantuan International relations exa—worth 20% of my grade— which my professor has postponed for three weeks already and which will be five weeks late if we finally take it after spring break. (Tuesday, March 8th—I get to take three exams on my nineteenth birthday. Yahoo.) I've never wanted to be done with any exam so much. I also need to study my part as Alice the Intern for a "team simulation" so I can…do…something that is a necessary part of my grade. My, my.
3. I want a vintage chocolate pot. I've always thought they were cool, and today I got to hold one in an antique market and it was GORGEOUS. Unfortunately, the cheapest one I've seen thus far—doing a little hunting on the Internet—is about $95, and the most expensive was upwards of $4000 (though that one, admittedly, was somewhere around five hundred years old. I didn't even know they had chocolate pots back then). So—we shall see. I want one. A lot. But I certainly cannot afford one myself, unemployed collegiate that I am.
4. Spring break…what am I ever going to do with myself for a whole week with no school? WRITE. Hang out with some of my amazing friends, both the Kalamazoo residents and those visiting from elsewhere. Try to get together enough of a D&D campaign to run an opening adventure. Get tight with God, because I want so much to be in love with Him and I don't think I am.
So…life. Crazy. Right now i need some sleep. Hopefully we (I'm not sure precisely who comprises that 'we" yet) making a trip to the Kalamazoo Art Institute after church tomorrow—should be fun! Hopefully I'll also make it to C&C (remonikered Dwell) tomorrow night! (For the first time in a month, dang.) Sometimes I want my life to slow down and sometimes I want it to throw me for an insane loop, and right now I can't even tell the difference. I just need to get some sleep. I think. I sort of want to cry for no reason, because crying, even when I'm not really upset, always seems to clear my head. An oddity of Kiersten or a normalcy of my species?
Guten nacht.
1. Ignition! I want to blog about this eventually. i just can't write a good post about this. I'm sorry.
In a nutshell, lacking spit and polish and articulacy:
Friday night/most of Saturday = general feelings of I've-been-here-I've-done-this-what-am-I-going-to-get-out-of-this-but-emotional-high? Kind of depressing. Great conference, but I felt kind of on the outside, like I juts didn't have any really good reason to be there.
Saturday night = really good message. God also kind of pointed out my "daddy issue" with Him. I cried a little bit. My hands did this weird shaky thing. Chrissy and Emily and a couple of other blurry faces came and prayed for me, and I love them lots and lots and lots. I might have made friends with Erica, which is pretty cool. She's sweet. And I love God. A lot. And He's letting me know that He;s not passive about me. He does care when I miss spending time with Him. He really, really does. And He cares whether I care. Simple, right? I feel like I should feel stupid for not realizing that before, but it was always one of those things that went in one ear and out the other, you know? I never really felt like God loved me so much that he wanted to spend time with me every day. I think I might have had a breakthrough there. *insert interjection for emphasis here* I hope so. And having people pray for me was incredible—because, not by any fault of anyone else's, sometimes I forget that my friends love me too.
I think spending my weekend on a youth retreat was worth it.
2. School. Mostly, I like college. I spend an astronomically smaller percentage of my time now being miserable than I did in high school. But the last month has been insane. It's spring break this week; I'm gad to have a breather. I feel like such a wimp, taking 12 credit hours (which is full-time, but less than the average for an honors student.) (I am so sick of hearing "honors" anything.) and still feeling behind all the time. But I am hanging on. I really need to come up with a topic for my minimum-ten-page humanities paper about an aspect of life in a major urban city. And I need to take this gargantuan International relations exa—worth 20% of my grade— which my professor has postponed for three weeks already and which will be five weeks late if we finally take it after spring break. (Tuesday, March 8th—I get to take three exams on my nineteenth birthday. Yahoo.) I've never wanted to be done with any exam so much. I also need to study my part as Alice the Intern for a "team simulation" so I can…do…something that is a necessary part of my grade. My, my.
3. I want a vintage chocolate pot. I've always thought they were cool, and today I got to hold one in an antique market and it was GORGEOUS. Unfortunately, the cheapest one I've seen thus far—doing a little hunting on the Internet—is about $95, and the most expensive was upwards of $4000 (though that one, admittedly, was somewhere around five hundred years old. I didn't even know they had chocolate pots back then). So—we shall see. I want one. A lot. But I certainly cannot afford one myself, unemployed collegiate that I am.
4. Spring break…what am I ever going to do with myself for a whole week with no school? WRITE. Hang out with some of my amazing friends, both the Kalamazoo residents and those visiting from elsewhere. Try to get together enough of a D&D campaign to run an opening adventure. Get tight with God, because I want so much to be in love with Him and I don't think I am.
So…life. Crazy. Right now i need some sleep. Hopefully we (I'm not sure precisely who comprises that 'we" yet) making a trip to the Kalamazoo Art Institute after church tomorrow—should be fun! Hopefully I'll also make it to C&C (remonikered Dwell) tomorrow night! (For the first time in a month, dang.) Sometimes I want my life to slow down and sometimes I want it to throw me for an insane loop, and right now I can't even tell the difference. I just need to get some sleep. I think. I sort of want to cry for no reason, because crying, even when I'm not really upset, always seems to clear my head. An oddity of Kiersten or a normalcy of my species?
Guten nacht.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Sunday night blues
I promise to get a post up about Ignition and awesome God-stuff soon. I poured a slew of stuff into a draft last night, but it's not really publishable in its current state. It's long and rambly and redundant and I would feel like a terrible writer if I let it loose on the Internet right now. I didn't have time to edit it today, because I went to church ten minutes after hauling myself out of bed and since then have been simultaneously trying to do homework and catnap all day, because I basically have felt exhausted, headachey, and ponderous (in the physical and mental senses). I've spent almost twelve consecutive hours now laboring over what should have been six hours' worth of homework at most. I missed out on testimony night at youth group, and missed going to Dwell (second week in a row—bah) and now it's almost midnight and I'm lonely…if there is one thing that makes me outright miserable lately, it's being the only one awake in the house, not of choice, but because of homework I didn't do. Maybe it's ridiculous, but it makes me feel sort of abandoned. Faugh, this character analysis essay is letting me down (I love doing character analyses, but doing them on a deadline sucks), and I'm dog tired, and Jesus is my lifeline (believing that). Anyway, I'll post about Ignition (hopefully) tomorrow. School this week is going to need a healthy dose of optimism. In addition to my normal homework load, I also have to do a six-page literature analysis of this 1980s movie and I have this ludicrously humongous International Relations exam on Thursday, which I'm getting more stressed about by the hour.
I do not want this week to happen.
Maybe it will look better after I've actually gotten some SLEEP.
Hannah, I should get those notes for you typed up soon! Hopefully tomorrow!
…Also, I got you and Gwen wristbands from Ignition, so (both of you, if you still read this, Gwen) remind me when you come to Kalamazoo!
I do not want this week to happen.
Maybe it will look better after I've actually gotten some SLEEP.
Hannah, I should get those notes for you typed up soon! Hopefully tomorrow!
…Also, I got you and Gwen wristbands from Ignition, so (both of you, if you still read this, Gwen) remind me when you come to Kalamazoo!
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