Christmas Festivities

Every year Jordan Creek Town Center has this big to-do when they light this massive Christmas tree on their lake/pond/moderately-sized body of water. It's a lot of fun because the radio station comes out and there's live music and tasty cookies and probably hot chocolate somewhere and FIREWORKS. And SANTA comes and then everybody floods into the mall to be warm.

I've been three years in a row now and always have a lot of fun. This year they were passing out bags of, get this, magical reindeer feed. I got more excited about this than I should have, I think. It was mostly dried corn and nuts and things of that nature with GLITTER mixed in (thus making it magical... everybody knows magical things are sparkly).

Naturally, I thought surely if I was being given this reindeer feed, there would be reindeer to, you know, feed. Sadly, Rudolph and the gang never made an appearance so I suppose it was just a souvenir.

Anyway, I went with some friends from APO and we met up with some APO friends from the Iowa State chapter and it was a really good time. After the fireworks we went inside to go see Santa and get our picture taken with him.

I got to spend a few minutes with the big guy and he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told him gainful employment with benefits immediately following Memorial Day would be nice. And for my roommie her GRE scores (she's been good this year).

Here we are... eleven 20+ year old college kids sitting with Santa. And you know what else is awesome? I got a Build-A-Bear Workshop coupon. Yeah, it was a good day.

I have just one thing to say

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Car Trouble

I'm told bad things come in threes. If that's the case, I'm already up to two and should just spend the rest of my life in bed hiding from big, bad number three.

Admittedly, this stuff isn't all THAT bad.

First I was involved in a minor car accident in the parking garage at Meredith. I was going through the garage and stopped my tiny car behind this silver Chevy monstrosity, which was in turn stopped because a red Honda was trying to pull into a space. Well, she had to back up to get into it and HE had to back up to make room for her and had no idea I was there. Well, one thing lead to another and my beautiful baby car got her first boo-boo. Check out the pics at the bottom.

Damage was minimal and his car didn't have any to speak of. But now I get to deal with insurance companies and that's just all sorts of fun. Not. It's nothing close to fun. My side of the story doesn't match with his side of the story and now we have this whole thing going on... oy, it's a hassle.

Then tonight I was driving home from school late and I was like a block and a half from my apartment. I was at this funky intersection with a railroad track. Now, the magical line you're supposed to stop at when the light turns red is well behind the railroad tracks. Well, I passed the line, THEN the light turned red, but I was still driving most of the way through the intersection...

Yeah, anyway, I got pulled over and, surprisingly didn't panic at all. I've never EVER been pulled over before (nor been in a car accident while driving) so I thought I'd be all crazy and trying to cry my way out of it or something. Nope. I was just calm and cooperative and after spending a good ten minutes with my license, the cop just gave me a warning. Maybe he noticed my spotless record.

I suppose neither of those things are earth-shatteringly terrible; it's just weird that both of those things were firsts for me, had to deal with my car, and happened within a week of each other.

Anyway, I promised pictures and pictures you shall have.

515

Ok, so... last time we left off I was not warming up too much to my capstone project. I was feeling burned out and unmotivated. I had hit a variety of brick walls with the stories I was working on and I was just not enjoying myself.

The good news is that I got over it and have been plugging along rather happily for the last several weeks. The even better news is that the whole thing goes to PRINT.

ON MONDAY.

Holy heck! I can't believe it. We somehow, magically, slapped together a magazine in less than three months. And it looks really good, too. We have pin-up tonight (when lots of people come and put stickies on our layouts and tell us what should change) and then we work really, really, really hard to make changes over the weekend and then by Monday it's out of our hands.

EEEEP!

I'm really proud of my hard work and can't wait to see the finish product. Though, I admit, I'm kind of sick of looking at it for the time being.

No pics or anything, but you should definitely check out our website here.

Apple Patch and Pumpink Orchard

A couple of weeks ago, my roomie, my weekend roomie (her boyfriend) and I went to Center Grove Apple Orchard for some wonderful fall fun. It was a really good time. They had loads of apple trees, a pumpkin patch, a hay ride, a corn maze, a PETTING ZOO (OMG! ANIMALS!), food, games and a cornbox, which is a sandbox Iowa-style.

Check out the pics!


Roomie and bf


Roomies


Sexy tractor


Iowa-style sandbox! Full of corn!


Corny!


Standing in the corn!

The accident

This past weekend was APO's regional conference in Duluth, MN. It's a whopping six hour drive, but we decided it was worth it.

We were on our way back and just outside of St. Paul late Sunday morning when traffic came to an immediate halt going both directions. We had no idea what was going on. There was a truck going north that had pulled over with its hazards on. And we saw a guy run through the median to a car going south. There was another car pulled over with the driver talking on his cell phone and looking really distressed.

Everybody was at a stand-still.

We were stopped for a few minutes before people started getting out of their cars to check it out. I went with a friend to go see what was happening. I only got to see broken glass and car parts before another guy told us we'd be better off not looking because it was a gruesome scene.

Luckily we listened.

We were maybe 100 feet from the accident. A father and his 4-year-old boy were dead. A car traveling north lost control, flew through the median ditch, and hit a car going south, with the father and son.

The driver of the car that lost control was 19 and he wasn't wearing a seat belt. Neither was his passenger. They were launched from the car and had to be airlifted to the hospital.

The accident is tragic, but being so close to it was so unnerving. It still is. If I didn't have to run into the hotel one last time before we left, if our driver actually drove the speed limit, if we waited to get gas... if any little thing changed, it could have been us.

Nothing separated our car from that fate except mere feet and a handful of seconds.

It's dumbfounding to think about and I'm not sure how to feel about it, either. On one hand, I'm obviously very thankful and lucky to be ok. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder why it wasn't us. What's that called? Survivor's guilt? I mean, that boy was 4. He never got the chance to do much of anything before he was taken away.

Why am I still here?

It's sad and it's weird and the more information that comes out about it, the more complicated my feelings become. I've never been so close to death before. I'm not sure I like it, to be honest.

Read about the accident here: http://www.startribune.com/local/west/69599407.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

Reality

Ok, so... all in one crazy week I registered for my last semester of classes, ordered my cap and gown, AND filed my graduation application. That's not like a little dose of reality... that's like a big, fat, sweaty reality body slam.

But it's ok. I'm not panicking. Really, I'm not. Something has clicked in my head in the past couple of weeks and I just know in my mind that it'll all be OK. I can't tell you what I'll be doing in May, but it'll be ok, whatever it is.

Right now I'm really excited about graduation. I loved watching my friends last year graduate and I'm excited to be the one turning my tassel in May. I'm also thankful I'm graduating from a small school (by that I mean the Journalism school with something like only 40 grads) so I don't have to stand and watch hundreds of people graduate.

It should be great.

And as far as next semester's classes go, I'm only taking 4, which is beyond awesome. There will be more time to work... whee... how exciting. The weird thing is I can't take anymore journalism classes so I'll be graduating with a degree in journalism after not having any j-classes for a full semester.

It's all good, though. It's all good.