i'm feeling better these days than i karmically have a right to, but who's complaining? see, when people ask me how i am and i say 'i'm fine,' they're secretly thinking 'liar!' (in josh voice if you can hear it), when in fact i'm grossly understating.

and hey, when did parents get so wise? at what point did their words begin to comfort me rather than annoy me? i wish i had my mom's words written, she is my go-to girl for rejuvenation. but says dad: '..after all, there's a lot of people to meet, places to go and things to do before you've done it all. Resist the pressure and keep yourself open to all things. By the way, you're a caring person, don't let your lack of hysterics bug you to the point that you do something that your head says is not the best thing to do.'

i tend to think the worst of myself, and my parents tend to think the best, and somewhere in between lies the truth. but, you know, maybe i should start to trust them for once.

so i feel like i have my life insanely in order these days, i feel like i'm actually doing something. i'm the only veteran lab assistant, so that makes me, for all intents and purposes, head of the lab my sophomore year. not that that title carries some monumental distinction, but it does put me in charge of a lot of things and responsible for what four other girls do. and i'm totally up for that.

i'm also, as i alluded to last entry, in charge of the democrats' campaign work in my poli sci class. of course, in heavily republican marietta, this amounts to only two other people, but they're both the kind of people who would naturally take that leadership role, so i'm pretty psyched that dr del@at asked me to do it.

saturday was our first campaign event - just a parade, just cutting up stickers and holding a banner, nothing too challenging or, for that matter, interesting. but the cool thing was, i got to meet ted strickland, our congressman around here for the last eon or so. i knew when he shook my hand that it's that practiced politician handshake - you've seen it a million times and it's so cheesy - but i couldn't help but be impressed. he has that air about him: this is a man who knows what he's doing, this is a man who knows how to win. anyway, suffice it to say i'm a great big nerd and it is an honor to work on his campaign.

i've been doing my work completely and on time, which is a whole new thing for me. i'm taking an 18 hour course load, half of them 300-level, which is sort of daunting. so yes, i have pretty much decided not to drop my spanish class. it may take me a while to get back up to snuff, but eventually i will and it's important to me to have that second language. so hopefully i can keep up this good student facade. there's always temptation elsewhere - but then again, sometimes the work is a good escape.

i'm going home this weekend. yes, already. there's this costume party dance thing two weeks from now, and all my girls and i decided we should break out the old prom dresses. we are so ridiculously excited about this, you should see us falling all over ourselves when we talk about it. you'd think we were high school seniors all over again. but anyway, i'm going home to retrieve it, and this is a good time to because sunday is emma's baptism. so there's a couple things to look forward to.

and, most exciting of all, i think i've figured out exactly where i want to study abroad next fall. i have never been able to zero in on one country because, you know, i want to travel everywhere. yesterday i visisted a study abroad website and came upon the idea of a semester at sea voyage or a european cultural history tour. either way, i get to experience dozens of countries first-hand. this definitely seems ideal for me. so i'm going to talk to d@nford sometime this week, see what he thinks, and get the process started.

so that's about all that's going on in my little life. next time, maybe a more philosophical entry on love and religion - or more to the point, my lack of either - you know, those topics i beat into the ground long ago. 'cause that's always fun.

I know she loves the sunrise No longer sees it with her sleeping eyes And I know that when she said she's gonna try Well it might not work because of other ties and I know she usually has some other ties
Jack Johnson