Tonight was a campus-wide costume contest... and I was Julia Grant! (More pictures: one , two , three .)

Amazing! I shall explain. I've been busy working on a paper that I've since turned in - a rather big paper, actually. So that's one reason I haven't posted lately. Also, I went home this weekend, and visited my grandparents' (the other ones, not the ones I just saw) on Saturday. And my cousins. Great fun!! It was trick-or-treat night in their neighborhood, so my cousins brough their costumes and got all decked out for the event. My one cousin especially looked chilling: Isn't that a cool costume? Thirdly, I had an exam at eight o'clock yesterday morning I had to study for. Not much studying, but still, some. And I found out today that I tied for highest score on that exam. That's good. (I don't know the exact score yet, just that I did that well.) Fourthly, I had to read a long chapter for history. (All the chapters are long....) And I spent Sunday afternoon doing that. Oh, the joys of reading a rather dry recitation of this world's

...is one of my favorite pastimes. I went over to one of the music practice rooms today to practice a song I'm supposed to be singing at my home church this Sunday. On the way back, despite the cold, I took a roundabout way and photographed leaves lying in the grass... and the cross standing in the middle of the campus... and some leaves on a layer of brick. All in black and white. Of course, this being fall, I took some color pictures too. But I enjoyed the black-and-white ones more; today it was a little overcast, so the lighting was just right for that kind of photography.

...visited cousins... ...wrote a science summary... ...and laughed out loud at this sign! Isn't that hilarious?? Also, and in this same dinky little town, I saw a great water tower: Yes, this town definitely has a sense of humor.

Yeah, it's midterm break. It doesn't seem like it's been six weeks... but I guess it must have gone by without my permission! Or perhaps simply without my knowledge. I got new shoes today!!!! And I picked out some trim for my purple skirt. Black satin ribbon from my bottomless stash of notions. I'm going to love this skirt, I think. And believe it or not... I'm already making plans for another sewing project. I've had the fabric for months, but now I've finally decided on a pattern and a complementary shirt to make with the remainder of the material. It'll probably end up somewhat stylish too, for a change. Apparently long flared skirts are back in!

As of three o'clock this afternoon, I had completed my last midterm. This last one was an earth science lab exam, in which I had to identify fifty rocks, minerals, and fossils. Which is really not nearly as hard as it sounds! So the rest of this afternoon was spent typing up results of a survey I conducted for my research paper. This research paper concerns - of all things - Facebook. More specifically, my paper will explore the effects Facebook has on freshman socializing. No, seriously!

Get this... somebody pulled the fire alarm about seven-thirty this morning. So every last girl had to wake up, get up and file out the door in the cold to be counted. A normal prank. What's funny is that the same thing happened about three o'clock this afternoon! Yep. Two fire drills in one day. In other news, I've been aching for a sewing project, and finally came up with a good one! I'm over halfway done with a purple skirt. This skirt has two flounces - if you're not sure what that means, you can look at it on the McCall's website - it's the middle one on the left. I'm using some leftover material from old sheets that I dyed to make my sister's Christmas gift last year. Deep purple.... I didn't pay any sixteen dollars for this pattern; got it for free from the 4-H office a couple years ago. I love sewing. :-) It's a nice break from studying.

I am incapable of sleeping in past eight o'clock, most of the time seven-thirty. Yes, that's A.M. Yes, even when I've been up till one o'clock the night before. Anyways.... Being Friday night, my dorm is emptying itself of its inhabitants, and tomorrow I will probably wake up to half-empty next-door rooms and a very slow, nearly dead, campus. All of which are conducive to midterm studying! So I will be reviewing notes from history and my journalism class, both of which have midterm exams early next week. Speaking of which... the other midterm exam isn't going to be all that hard, since it's simply identifying fifty rocks, minerals, and fossils. I went to review the items today, and found that I could probably remember them all if I just looked over my list a couple times. All I have to do is remember that schist is shiny and chert reminds me of the Beatles. (Don't ask me why; I think it has to do with the movie "The Yellow Submarine" and the

...when you've just read nearly sixty pages of required reading and actually think you could have chosen to read the book for your own benefit. This autobiography for history, written by one Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, is quite interesting and somewhat adventureous. I don't like it as much as Chesterton's autobiography, of course, but it's sure more interesting than ever Ben Franklin's was. And more interesting than normal biographies that I've read. And it's a good thing. I have to finish at least the bio part (there are other documents in the book too) by Friday. In other news.... Huh. I can't seem to think of other news. Except that the yearbook photographer will be at dance tonight! And I'll get to gather interesting material for the captions, since I'm in charge of the dance page!!

I'm going to have to start naming my homes - home-home and college-home. That's because both feel that way now. All my important stuff is at college-home, but my family, some friends, and church are at home-home. Anyways... As the title mentions, I am back now (well, as of last night actually). Got some homework done last night, and had an exam this morning - that's why I'm out of my first class so early. And I can't really think of anything else to post. Except that I still think that driving class was an absolute BLAST. :-)

Yesterday I went to a really cool driving school to which I received a gift certificate. It's one-of-a-kind, at least in this region of the U.S. - there were people from all over, of course; the teachers were from Florida and California. (The Floridian was actually an Irishman, but has been here in the States for twenty years.) And it's normally REALLY expensive, so when I got this gift certificate I just had to go!! We got to do crazy things - drive a slalom course really fast (well, as fast as flooring it in first gear will get you - I squealed the tires every time, that's for sure!), drive a car that was rigged up to skid easily and try to keep control of the car while it was skidding constantly for about twelve minutes, floor it into a patch of water and smooth asphalt then try take a quick right turn.... all sorts of fun stuff! So we learned what to do in such sticky situations as someone suddenly pulling out in front of you, or suddenly coming upon a patch of ice t

OK, another weird story from history class: At Waterloo (the famous battle that Napoleon lost), there was a Prussian guy by the name of Gebhard von Blucher. He was the general of the Prussion force fighting against Napoleon. That's not all he was.... he had sensitive feet, you see. And he was so paranoid about Napoleon that he refused to step directly on the dirt floors of his house. He stepped only on the carpets. It was because, according to him, Napoleon had bribed his servants to heat the floor and burn his feet... crazy, right? But, of course, there were the abdominal pains... which he attributed to his pregnancy ... he said he was pregnant with an elephant .

After all my qualms about getting anything resembling a MySpace account... I got a Facebook account... and I'm still trying to figure out how this works...

My history book says that the phrase "mad hatters" came about because mercury used in hatmaking sometimes poisoned the workers and caused dementia!

OK, so I had my friend take a photo of me the last time I was wearing my "Hermione cape" (or, rather, the fall cape which first caused her to say I looked like Hermione ). Compare with a web image of Emma Watson, actress who portrayed Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies: Granted, she's not smiling, and I am. Oh, and if you're more curious about this cape than about my supposed resemblance to a fictional character, there's a decent picture of it on my Flickr. I really like this cape. I even have a matching hat that I often wear with it. It's a marvelous cape for fall weather.