Book Sale!

I swear, when I actually grow up and have a job, and a home, and a family, the two things that will kill my wallet apart from the kids are food and book sales.

But then again, book sales aren't too expensive. I just get wayyy excited and carried away haha. But $21 for like 10 books, some hardcover and all in pretty amazing condition! Matt found like a half-dozen Redwall books today too, when we went for the bag sale. And I found Quidditch Through the Ages. =D

So much happiness.

BOOKS!!! ❤

Best Suite: 1927 Hall 132

There are some really awesome dorm rooms in our Prince article! And one of them is ours! They completely missed the awesomeness that is the upstairs bedroom though... This picture is really just a picture of my desk and the stairs. And me, sitting at my desk, hole-punching what are undoubtedly MOL lecture notes.

Had physics lab today. Absolutely horrid. But met some cool people! Ran a study break tonight from Infini-T. Mary is absolutely amazing and her scones are delicious - I definitely gorged myself on them and cranberry acai tea.

Also got an email back from Professor MacMillan! Attending my first lab meeting next Wednesday. Super excited but also nervous haha. Hope I don't come off too naive and ignorant, even though I'm sure I will be...

Had a pretty rough day today in terms of mental... sanity? It's been really rollercoaster-ing these past few days. But at the end of each, God is good, and he's blessed me with more than I could ever imagine, and more than I will ever realize. Really excited for PEF tomorrow, and Outdoor Prayer and Praise if I can make it! Also TAStork is tomorrow - can't wait to meet Alex and Annie and all of the other frosh! Plus I love physics precept and math/chem lectures. Call me weird, but you already knew that. =] Tomorrow will be good.

When I was little, I loved the idea of being independent: living by myself, buying my own things, making my own schedule. But now that I'm older, how blessed am I that I have someone to go to at all times, who will answer my every call?

He gave his life to fix me.

Who We Are =]

A New Day

I sincerely just thank God so much for what He's already done today. This morning was nothing short of a miracle. 

Started off the day (well, sort of...) with a beautiful sunrise and a Wa hoagie shared with the wonderful Matthew Wang. =] Which was followed promptly by more sleep haha.

Eisgruber's installation ceremony is today! Passed by on my way back from CVS haha. Looks pretty awesome, but I have wayyy too much homework to go. Probably going to the concert just because they have Nomad Pizza and Bent Spoon though. =P

Now for *all* the work... =\

Sick Day

Today is a day that I actually would have skipped high school to stay home and just sleep. That's saying something, coming from the girl who had perfect attendance and never missed a day of school barring competitions and field trips. Sadly, I'm not in high school anymore.

I am actually so sick right now that all I want is for someone to hold my hand and sing me to sleep.

The First Week

Pretty busy, had all of my classes and met up with a lot of clubs.

I like most of my professors which is promising. 

We got a decent number of guard signups too! Still need funding though, so we'll see how that pans out. 

Feeling pretty sick today. Praying that I get better before lawnparties tomorrow or at least class on Monday. 

Busy busy. So much to do!

Back to Orange and Black!

Not going to lie, I'm a bit stressed out with all of my classes and clubs already. There's so much to do! But it's good. I'm working myself back into the flow of things, and after the first week or so, things calm down...

My arm is still bruised... =[

And I still feel as though I'm waiting for something that will never come.

The Last Traces of Summer

As of today, Command Center is officially closed. We moved everything from the center to the office today, OIT is getting rid of the phones if they haven't already... Return day was ridiculous. In the stadium from 1pm to 12am with an hour break from about 10:30-11:30pm. Everything went pretty smoothly except one bus with a flat tire though.

It's so crazy having people back on campus. It's suddenly so much louder with so many more new faces... Classes start in 3 days. Wow.

Highlights of the end of Command:
~ Jump-shaking Hansen's trip

~ Elan gave me his robot light pen =D

Daria: "May one side of your bacon just burn."
Kevin: "That is too far. OUT OF THE COMMAND CENTER!"

Elan: "Who knows the bagel song?!"

Elan: "We're going to have a stuck bus, a temporarily lost bus..."
Kathryn: "Elan! Think happy thoughts!"
Elan: "Those *are* happy thoughts!"

Aoi: "I can't believe the freshmen are coming! There are going to be more freshman on campus than regular people!"

Elan: "Wait, what are we putting in the Support packet besides one sheet of paper?"

Elan: "If you need some rocket boosters for that last mile, Epipen!"

Random frosh: "Bye Control!"

Me (referring to the climbing wall): "I do like a 5.1, maybe 5.2..."
Horia: "Are we talking about GPAs?"

Saving Lives

Got to donate blood today! Well, sort of. Apparently my veins are barely the size of the needle, and they're surface veins since my arms are so small, so when I squeezed the little stress ball thing, it caused the needle to slip out and my arm to basically spurt blood everywhere. Awks. They got a little bit though, so hopefully they can still do something with the blood I *did* give.

Nurse (after the pre-check): "We have another contestant!"

Me (on donating blood): "So it's either going to be awesome, or it's going to suck... Like my life."

Me (on drawing blood): "That seems really monotonous."
Nurse: "What, doing the same thing over and over again?"
Me: "Yeah."
Nurse: "-deadpans- Yeah."

Emptied trucks into the storage room today. Pretty tired. We got to practice the audio of our "Call Me Maybe" version though! Super super fun. May I just point out Elan is surprisingly good at it (he sang a practice round with Kathryn and me). xD

Kevin: "Sorry for the embarrassing level of cleanliness in here."

Daria: "I can give you cancer!"

Kevin: "They gone rogue; they're now leading a bunch of Yale students."

Kevin (upon getting a call from a van): "There *is* a frosh trip god! Hey Van ---! How's it going? ...No accent?"

Kevin (talking to the same van as before): "Van ---, we meet again."

Kevin: "You must have me on speaker phone. I can hear everything I'm saying because it's coming back into my earpiece. That's why I'm pausing, and listening to myself."

Elan: "You see this robot? -projects picture of the Android robot onto a notepad using a Google pen light- He's going to be very sad. -turns pen upside down-"

Elan: "This pen is pretty useless because someone shoved it into the wrong cap. -tries to open the pen, basically pulls it apart, leaves room to get a new one-"
Tyler: -grabs pen, opens with no problem-

Call Us Maybe!

We're making an OA Command version of "Call Me Maybe."

It's going to be epic.

We're All Going Crazy Here

Ridiculously tired today, so I'm sure I missed some memorable moments. Ah well. Got a package from my mom and a replacement suitcase from Randa (since the handle broke on my virtually new one). But now I just have two essentially identical luggages. Going to try to sell one during this year; otherwise, I might have to store it or ship it back or something.

Here's a shout-out to Chris since he's sad he's not on here yet (be funnier gosh).

Highlights of today:
Rick: "You're breaking up... you're breaking up... breaking up is hard, isn't it?"

Nick: "You haven't heard that song? (to the tune of Kiss Him Goodbye) Na na na na, na na na na, it's Daniel, Yeboah. He's from Ghana, real Ashanti, it's Daniel, Yeboah."

Elan: "It's like Princeton people revert back to wait on me mode."

Kevin: "Now that you have the evac, you thought ooh, now we have another potential evac, we might as well take advantage of the setting! ...No? Okay."

Tyler: (waves frantically at Kevin)
Kevin: (looking everywhere except at Tyler) "Was someone flagging me?"

Elan: "All this time I thought I was special!"
Cordelia: "Well you thought wrong!"
Elan: "But my frosh trip dreams are canceled!"

Elan: "Did they feed it [a bear]? Did they clip its nails? Did they pull its ears?"
Kevin: "They're currently braiding its hair."

Rick: "Lights... Camera... FOOD!"

The Butterfly Circus

"The greater the trial, the more glorious the triumph."

Day 3 in the "Outbacks"

Got my fridge today! A big thank you and I love you to Matt for insisting on carrying it back to my dorm for me. Going to set it up later tonight and then I'll have cold drinks and be able to keep my leftovers! Need to head up to Labyrinth and get some books, then meeting up with Lawrence tonight for a game of pool with Matt. =]

Didn't realize classes started next Wednesday - thought for some reason that it started the week after that. Woops. Totally not ready. Gah.

Command reports thus far (apart from medical issues/evacs): bear-bagging rope lost in tree, broken trowels, fake British accents, requests for soy sauce/cheese/apples/olive oil... The list goes on. We're also assigning stars and emoticons to vans for how much we like them.

Highlights of today (afternoon shift):
~ A trip left extra cheese with a support van, and now wants the cheese back

~ Telling Hansen (actually Hansen this time) that he doesn't get water again (this time because they chose to cancel their support drop)

~ A trip forgot how to use Aquamira and only used Part B

Me: "If you're not crying, you're not doing it right."

Elan (regarding my blog): "The tone of your posts changes dramatically as I become either more human or more clown-like in your eyes."

Elan: "We can't leave our chickens without sheepdogs!"

Kathryn: "OA Command, this is Kathryn."
Hansen: "This is H2."
Kathryn: "HANSEN!"
Hansen: "Wait, who is this?"

Rick (on the phone): "Yeah, and he's a real jerk. You don't want to get tied up with that guy."

Elan (after me telling him a trip is on the line for him): -deadpan monotone- "I'm so excited to talk to them."

Kevin: "You aren't playing Ultimate Frisbee; you don't have enough people to be playing Ultimate Frisbee. You were just running after it."

Van Troubles

Pretty busy day in the morning, lots of van issues (flat tires, broken tail lights). Running over nails, backing into trees... Not to mention a huge storm in the Harriman area, which means a lot of trips are revising routes. On one hand, it was nice because then the remapped route could be mapped near water, which would help with the impacted water drops because of the van situation, but still pretty stressful.

Two flat tires on different vans, two people at the hospital... Lots of code yellows, and we got our first code red today. Allergic reaction to a bee sting, so an Epipen was used. Intense.

It's been absolutely hectic.

Highlights of today (thus far):
~ Telling Hansen (or rather, his co) he can't have water (because a van has a flat). We were joking about that before he left, but actually

~ A van ran into a tree. I will just say that I know the drivers of said van, and the scenario is sort of hilarious

Elan (on a revised route): "That's more palatable."

Elan: "Yeah, it's someone's birthday... I want to give them a shuttle to the falls." (Awhhhhh)

[[Following relayed by Kathryn]]

Kevin: "I can't hear you; I can tell you're trying to communicate."

Elan (while talking to a support team with fake British accents): "Did you happen to get lost and end up in the British Isles?"

Kevin: "All the little chickees are tucked in their beds, with wonderful tarps over their heads." (another 7 verses followed)

Elan (while trying to find my/this blog): "Okay I have an idea. I'm going to try every other username on her page."

This is Madness!

I'm going to stick with the brief summary, highlights layout throughout Command. It works pretty well haha.

Woke up at 5:30am. Felt absolutely horrible. Might be coming down with a cold too, which is saddening. Checked in all of the trip groups (asked tons of questions and took valuables boxes) except I was so tired I kept stumbling over my words. Finished check-in, moved valuables boxes to Forbes (new lobby is pretty nice, though weirdly modern). Headed over to the office and spent the next 5 hours frantically answering phone calls and making logs, and calling vans and groups to confirm arrival at dropoff points.

But honestly, this is a *ton* of fun. This is what I signed up for. And Elan's honestly super awesome. He's hilarious and just super awesome to work with. =]

Highlights of today:
~ A girl storing a fishing pole and Ziploc bags in valuables boxes

~ Aoi fighting to get all the phone calls

~ Accidentally calling 911 because a support van gave a bogus cell number starting with a 1 (you have to dial 9-1 before a non-609 number)

~ Elan prank calling Aoi with a group trip called "Indoor Farming"

~ A trip losing their bear-bagging rope in a tree. How do you even *do* that?

~ And a trip requesting a support drop for soy sauce

Me: "Does everyone have three full Nalgenes?"
Leader: "Some only have two..."
Me: "Can you go get more from gear distribution so that everyone has three?"
Leader: "They don't want to carry three..."

[As told by Kathryn] Elan (half talking to himself): "I'll just eat mine [my lime] even if they dissolve your teeth..."

Kevin (overheard on phone conversation about a camping stove): "Well, sometimes when you put Humpty Dumpty back together again, he's not quite the same..."