When I spoke to my parents last night, they both told me to "get a good night's rest." Unfortunately, this was impossible, because of a telling and typical Daniels Hall moment.
I went to bed around 11, like usual, but I was rudely awakened at 2:45 by the fire alarm. After changing from the booty shorts I wore to bed into some pj pants, I grabbed my ID and was out the door (this sounds like superfluous detail, but believe me, it is not).
All 800 residents piled out of the hall and onto the front lawn, where the rumor mills had everyone informed within five minutes. Apparently, several residents on one of the floors had deployed fire extinguishers. This, while being dumb (and illegal! There was no fire!) set off the fire alarms, and that's why we found ourselves outside.
It had rained during the beginning of the night, so the grass was damp but we all sat/lay down out of exhaustion. It WAS pretty exciting-- the firemen came, put on all their gear and explored the floor! Three police cars showed up to interview suspects! But the whole process was backwards and sitting outside in your pjs on the damp grass at 3 a.m. is not anyone's favorite thing.
For a while, they weren't going to let anyone back inside the building until the residents 'fessed up, but this (to no one's surprise) proved uneffective. The delay between the residents arriving outside and the staff realizing what had happened was long enough for anyone guilty to wander away. So, cranky and sleepy we all waited outside for some conclusion to be reached.
This was when I noticed my most recent admirer. This may sound a bit egotistical, but there have been many of them. Unfortunately, I am attractive to the strangest and most socially awkward people ever (some balance between looking approachable and not looking unattainable, I don't know). Now, this guy had started several awkward interactions with me, but I was trying to look at them as coincidences. Now, sitting outside without a bra on (but thankfully, wearing pants!) I noticed that he was lurking and watching me. "Ashleeeeey!" I hissed. "Shhh," she tried to soothe me, to no avail.
I ignored it until 4 a.m. when the staff decided to detain only residents from the floor in question, while admonishing "No one even TRY to go into that floor." As the crowd lurched forward I noticed my new admirer directly behind me. I snuck in front of my roommate to gain some distance, but every way I tried to evade him, he got close to me again.
When we got inside, we saw that the elevators were back to normal, and residents from the higher floors were waiting to ride them up. I sustained the false hope that my new admirer would wait for an elevator, but he chose to climb the stairs. I hurried upward to my floor, trying to stay several flights ahead of him. I dashed into the hallway and ducked into my room. "That was so creepy!" I said, and after catching my breath, I walked to the bathroom. After peeing (something I'd been waiting to do for over an hour), I realized I didn't have my toothbrush, so I went back into the room to grab it. As I exited my room, my admirer popped out of the men's bathroom door (conveniently located next to my room) and awkwardly tried to block my path while making eye contact.
Yes, that's right. Not only did he stare at me for an hour, chase me up the stairs and know what floor I live on, he lay in wait for me at the bathroom door closest to my room. This suggests a deeper stalking than I really want to admit.

Last year, writing the TOK extended essay, a 4,000 word paper seemed impossible. My paper took months and I agonized over it. Yesterday, I wrote the same length in a day. Why am I not an English major?

For most of my life, people have remarked about how small I was. For a long time, I was kinda like, whatever I am a normal sized person, you are just confused. But over a long period of time, I decided that I actually was smaller than the average person. I had small feet, little hands and a generally petite body.
Or so I thought until I arrived at college. So far, I have not recieved one "you're so liiiiittle" comment. I have been moving back toward the "I am a regular sized person" thing. Like this video I just made with Marissa. Watching it, I am definitely the bigger of the two people.
I don't think it helps that I've gained like 20 pounds in the last 1.5 years. I've been trying to ignore that little detail, but I was just looking over some of my stuff and I found this card I wrote out in the summer before senior year when I decided I was "too fat" and I needed to lose some weight. Not only have I not lost any of that weight, I have gained 20 pounds. I disgust myself. We'll just pretend it's the freshman 15, and I will lose it next year and go back to being small. Yep.

One thing I am definitely appreciating in Cincinnati is the snow days. In highschool, we had an allotted number of snow days, or something, and the number was approximately zero. So, even on days when cars literally had to be dug out of the snow (Thanks, Laney), we went to school. Here, it snows and school is cancelled. Mmmm.
And they're not afraid to call it a snow day, either. None of this "ok, it might be snowing a lot, but school is cancelled because there is no electricity. this is not a snow day-- repeat-- not a snow day. it is a lack-of-electricity day" stuff.
Yay for cities where they don't have a secure plowing system. When it snows, it's this big scramble, like "where are the plows? do we own plows? do we have people to run them?" and so the snow doesn't get cleared for hours. I especially hated when we'd get like eight inches of snow, but it would come in the middle of the night and by the next morning all the roads were cleared. Boo, Minneapolis for understanding winter.
Yay Cincy, for not!

"Andy Studenski, he's so fun!"
Ok, so I realized that Studo is my best guy friend. And I also realized I have never blogged about him (actually, that's a lie, he got a brief mention in a post a few years ago). To remedy this, a post.
I met Studo in 9th grade, and I had a few classes with him. I'm not entirely sure how many, because I was pretty unclear on the difference between the two Andys that year. Then, I had math with him for a while, until he decided to take math SL. Yeah, bad call Studo, you're an engineer. Senior year I don't know if I was ever able to get away from him.
I have always made him a bit uncomfortable, I think, from the time I started an initiative to get his hair un-crisped to today, when I talked to him about genitalia. But he is always there to chat with and he is sooo funny, even if he thinks that he isn't. My day was completely made when he called, even if I ruined the experience with said genitalia conversation.
I need to make it perfectly clear that yes, this is the most recent step in my ongoing attempt to woo him. Obviously, I continue dating my way through the friend group, leaving broken hearts on the path behind me. I still think it's amusing that Dan was able to convince him of that to the extent that he was afraid to talk to me for a while.
I am glad that I no longer have to call Studo's house and talk to his parents, because they are still pretty wary of me (girls are not allowed to talk to Andy. You say it's about schoolwork? I will not give him the message.) Nontheless, they have tolerated my presence in their house for quite a while, and know my name, etc.
We have shared a lot of bio labs and chipotle runs, and I hope that we're friends til the end of time (awww). Thanks, Studo.

soooo college. is something i have not talked about yet. i have been meaning to, really truly i have. but it seems like i spend 80% of my life telling people what happens in my life. i didn't know if i needed another time to talk about what happens to me on a day to day basis. i'm already on the phone with my parents, talking to highschool friends on the phone, chatting with college friends about things that happened when they weren't there (or when they were but they just need a little reminder), etc. but i decided that blogging is probably good for me, and i really enjoy getting to read old entries, even if they weren't that awesome to write in the first place. so. here we are.

because i'm not going to spend all my time making references to the months of my life that have not been recorded, the 30 second capsule review:

july-- i spend 40 hours a week at a tedious but lucrative desk job, typing class action lawsuits. who stabs an 80 year old man in the heart? my freetime is spent with byrne and andy, trying to make the most out of the summer. i love my car.

august-- at the end of the month, i stop working the desk job. i spend 8 hours a day for 12 days at the minnesota state fair, the great minnesota get together! small children are cute, sometimes you just need a photo of disposable cameras, and i totally fixed the cow. all in all, worked on a pretend farm. i break up with andy and awkwardly cry in my car (and many other random places) for about a week straight.

september-- i ask my mom if she would homeschool me for college. she says "put your stuff in the car." an epic cross country journey ensues. a photograph is taken in coon valley. i arrive in daniels hall, sometimes referred to as "dirty daniels." for months, i don't know where this name comes from. in a whirlwind week i meet almost everyone i'm friends with now, get settled into school and buy hundreds of dollars of art supplies and books. many hours are spent waiting in lines at one stop. i am intimate friends with all employees. daap starts. i don't think i can handle it, and almost die completing my greyscale.

october-- college continues. i fly back to mn for a weekend to be with my grandmother as she dies in hospice. things are pretty mellow for a while. i begin counting down to winter break. i start thinking about transfering.

november-- i storm the field when uc beats rutgers. then, i go home with ashley for thanksgiving. i shower without shoes on and meet her fabulous family. there are amish people everywhere.

december-- i begin to understand why the term dirty daniels was coined as the water leaks into my room. we are all horrified and take a stealth video of the nice man mopping our floor. i fly back to minnesota with a smile on my face. others in the airport think i am insane. andy and i decide we liked dating better than not, and he finally asks me out (thanks, babe). my depression, which had been pushed into hiding while i was living with three other girls sees this break as an opportunity to go a little bit crazy. i fight between wanting to see my friends and wanting to sit on my bed and cry. friends usually win. i attend a couple of awesome parties, most notably fatty circle. family christmas is weird, on a number of levels. i work on transfer applications in my spare time.

january-- i ring in the new year with fizzy apple juice and an elvis poster. andy and i embark on an epic 14 hour bus ride to ohio. we survive. he spends a week squeezing into my tiny bed and leaving his clothes all over my floor. then, he embarks on a 24 hour bus ride home. i am the only one crying on the sidewalk when the bus pulls away. the depression doesn't go away when i get back to school.

alright, well hardly 30 seconds. and i'm tired of blogging for right now. but i have nice clean background info to start from.

As little as I could believe a year had gone by last December, I can believe the two year mark even less. It's odd, really, marking things by years. I miss Justin at very random times, unrelated to the time of year or what I might be doing. But for some reason, anniversaries make me sit down and think, take some serious time out and remember. Today's a day when I don't feel like pushing my grief out of my mind.

I just read through the collection of old blog entries I have about him, and it's sad how much less clear my memories are today than they were two years ago. I'm so happy I wrote some of them down, otherwise I would be beating myself up even more. It makes me dizzy to think about all the memories I've lost. I'd actually forgotten about my year-long mourning period, and of my weekly black dress. I felt like I should have done something similar today, but I just looked down at my green sweater and smiled; this is more appropriate.

I still hate not having a place to go, I really wish I had an un-crass way of figuring out if there's a headstone somewhere. I've talked before about my love for ritual, and I think that one of the most overreaching patterns of grief includes a symbolic place. The best I've got is the internet, where I'll occasionally find an "RIP" in the sidebar of someone's Myspace. Not that I don't find electronic means of conveying my sadness; this blog is obviously an example, and several cellphones later I still have his number in my phone.

Justin, I will follow you into the dark.