all I want

Today I wrapped about a dozen presents. This came with its own set of challenges: first, I am a perfectionist so no present will ever be perfectly wrapped. It is terrible. Second, I am always afraid when I cut wrapping paper because I was trained from a young age to be careful about what was beneath the paper. So sometimes I fear cutting a bedspread and sometimes I fear cutting the actual present...in either case, I am very afraid. Third, there were a bunch of green beans hanging out next to the impromptu present-wrapping station in the garage, and I kind of had to battle them for space. Fourth, I have to pick papers and stickers that go together and make sense for the person and the present and this can be difficult to continue to care about after like five presents...too many decisions.

Anyway, I know none of the presents that I give will make anyone exceedingly joyous - nor will those that I receive grant me lasting contentment. (I think everyone, at some point, accepts this fact.) But even being with family, upholding traditions (like eating Belgian waffles tomorrow, yum!), hanging out with my friends at home, getting my final grades - things that are all good and that are way more important than getting a nice new sweater - all of these are temporary fixes to my constant need for happiness. There's only one thing that can make me truly happy - forever, without any concerns. And that's being in a relationship with God. And there's only one way to do that - through Jesus. Tomorrow is the day that we choose to publicly remember his birth, and that's ok with me. It's ok with me that it's one day out of the year and it's ok with me that he probably wasn't born on December 25th. I shouldn't strive to "remember" him every day because I believe he's alive every day; I don't strive to remember the birth of my friends every day, but I am grateful that they exist and that they want to listen to me even when I'm being really silly. While his birth was the biggest deal that ever went down in human history up until that point (I would say his resurrection blew that record out of the water), he wasn't born so that we could celebrate his birthday: he was born to die, he was born to reconcile us to God.

All I want - not just for Christmas, but forever - is to have a deeper relationship with God. I want my selfish spirit to become selfless. I want to be like Christ. To quote St. Ignatius of Antioch, an early martyr, in his letter to the Roman church:

Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the Devil--Only let me get to Jesus Christ!

In today's terms, come persecution, temptation, injustice, ridicule, losing friends, pain, death - it doesn't matter, because nothing can separate me from Jesus! That God chose to experience all of the pain of the human condition so that I might intimately know him is incredible. So I'm celebrating his existence, his decision, his love...and that's all that I need. I won't complain about the copious amounts of Christmas cookies in my house, though. :)

where do I live?

When someone asks me where I live, I have a number of responses depending on the context of our conversation and level of familiarity. But usually the answer is that I live in Stith (the building) and/or that I live with Abby. Of course I also live at my home with my family, but that's really talking about where I'm from.

But when I think about living in a building or even a room, it's kind of silly. I sleep in Stith and during finals I study in Stith but most of the things which I would consider living - hanging out and talking and eating and learning and worshiping and driving down Richmond Road at a heart-pounding 26 miles per hour and shopping and planning and running around and other things - all of those things, I do outside of Stith. So I really live in Williamsburg and mostly I live on the campus of William and Mary because that's where my life is happening.

Sometimes even this isn't true. Sometimes I spend my time on campus or in Stith or at home in nova and that's still not where I live. Sometimes I actually feel like I live in a number of other places, including but not limited to: Hogwarts (but actually), the internet, my head, the past, a land where all that matters is my ability to form the projection of a vector onto a column space, Katie's room, a real-life board game, Kanto, the set of a movie that's starring me, Morton, and my bed.

I don't think that any of those are very healthy places to live and I certainly think that we were created to live in the present (while still being able to learn from and analyze and plan for the past and future). So should I live in Stith or should I just live? I don't think it's really "just living" because I think it's actually kind of a big deal to be alive and to exist as I am. I don't think for a single day that this is all that matters: that my grades and what I wear and what people think of me define me or give me worth. Living purposefully and passionately requires me to live and not just exist and it requires me to live in the present and it requires me to live a life of love. Where I reside or happen to sleep should actually be the least of my concerns when I think about how I will live in the future: the question should not be where but in what manner and to what end?

Food for thought for future Marisa: where I live senior year is about as nbd as it gets. And where I live and what I do career-wise after that is similarly inconsequential given that I'm doing it for the right reasons and with the right attitude. This will be hard to accept when that time comes but it will not be any less true.

finals

things which have been substituted for meals:

• cupcake
• reindeer chow
• peanut m&m's
• red machine naked

things that have recently become super active:

• apo family on facebook
• overheard at william and mary
• my tumblr
• words with friends

things that now live in my bed:

• my laptop
• me
• my water bottle
• everything important

things I have watched since classes ended (five days ago):

• Love Actually
• Friends
• The Office
• Glee
• New Girl
• How I Met Your Mother

things I have accomplished this week:

• skimmed the readings I was supposed to do throughout October and November
• finished an exam in 70 minutes
• discovered new music on spotify
• beat Abby in words with friends....four times

resting

I've been thinking a lot about resting recently, probably because free time has become very scarce in my life lately. When I have time and nothing to do, my traditional approach to rest is threefold: getting on facebook until it bores me, watching tv until I've caught up on everything and then taking a nap until I have to do other things.

But I don't think that these are very restful at all. And I don't think that they're all that's meant for me. I think I'm meant for a satisfying kind of rest - one that doesn't just fill me up provisionally and one that isn't limited to a block of 2.5 hours between class and dinner.

I used to think that all that the Bible had to say about rest was this: take one day a week (the Sabbath) and be restful. Just don't do anything on that one day and then you'll be set for the week. I learned as I grew up that it didn't mean do literally nothing - but to take a break from work/toil. So to me that looked like taking a break from homework and going to church to worship God.

But God has a lot more to say about rest. Because I have a paper due tomorrow I won't go through instances where the Bible specifically talks about it, but it's an important topic that does get a lot of attention throughout the scriptures. Resting isn't doing nothing - it's doing something other than our usual schedule of work - it's fellowship, appreciating art, acknowledging the beauty of creation and the Creator. But even when I'm held to my strict/hectic/ridiculous schedule, there's another kind of rest that I can enjoy: resting in my identity in Christ. Resting in who I am and how that's not dependent on how I mess up. Resting in the fact that there is a plan for me and that my worrying about the future has no effect on it, so I might as well quit my complaints and start appreciating the journey. Resting assured, if you will.

So even though I'm not getting to sleep when I want to sleep or to catch up on Glee right away, and even though I have a lot of work ahead of me for finals, and even though I'm not sure what I'll be doing to make myself feel productive once winter break hits, I'm feeling pretty restful. Cool.

black friday

I'm writing this for three reasons:

1. My mom said I should, and in case you're unaware, my mom is the #1 reader of my blog!
2. I should be reading instead but it's a Saturday and you only get so much time to lounge in bed and indulge in reflection on your life.
3. I'm not quite hungry enough for brunch, and I need to wait for the taste of toothpaste to subside a bit before I can eat anyway.

SO. I've now done Black Friday shopping twice in my life. The first time was last year when all I really wanted was a shorter pea coat, so my mom and I went to the mall around 4am and successfully avoided all lines because it turns out the store had opened an hour earlier than we thought. (There were still great deals on pea coats to be had by all.) In that case, my motivation was pretty clear: I needed a specific coat. It was not the terrible experience I had been anticipating and in fact it was somewhat anticlimactic. I went to bed again after shopping and then had a normal holiday weekday.

In the past, I assumed that it was a miserable experience - I was well aware of the tragic tramplings and the campers outside of Best Buy every year. So in order to make my experience and my knowledge work together, I categorized my experience with clothing sales only. It naturally made sense that people would disperse more for clothes than they would for electronics, so even if there were a greater number of buyers, the buyer/store ratio would be lower.

This year I decided I wanted to go to Kohl's, because I needed to go shopping for clothes anyway and I might as well get a good deal. After watching The Muppets (great movie), my mom and sister and I drove to Kohl's....the line outside was massive, stretching all the way around the parking lot. But it was ok - there were a few minutes before midnight and then it would be ok. So we waited in the car until there wasn't a line, and then we went for it. Again, the shopping experience wasn't too hectic. I had to wait for a changing room and it was certainly difficult to navigate around customers when moving between sections of the store, but it was again nbd. Until, that is, I went to look for tights and realized that the line was getting massive. I wandered around the store until I could find the end of it and immediately planted myself there. It had somehow gotten to be 1:30 without my realizing it - which is crazy, because I am a super efficient shopper and if I'm not done in 45 minutes then I get tired and hungry and don't really care about clothes anymore, even the items I'm holding onto.

At the beginning of the line, we were just winding through aisles of the women's department - these were the people who got in line after me!

So this starts part 2 of the Black Friday experience. Eventually my family joined me and after we moved like 20 yards in 20 minutes, we let my sister go sleep in the car. Then my mom and I took turns wandering out of line to forage for good deals/water while the other held down our place in line and socialized with the shoppers immediately in front of and behind us in line. Though all I really wanted was my bed, I also could have gone for a McFlurry or basically anything sweet and cool to make it worth standing for that long. The only really interesting thing that happened was that the guy in front of me found an abandoned cart and began putting his things in it (he had been carrying two shoeboxes, a pillow and a bunch of clothes for his family) - but then an older man came up and asked him what he thought he was doing and took the cart away. Guess it hadn't really been abandoned?

We finally got to a register at 3:20, and though that was a very long line, I have to say that I think it was worth it. If it were any other time of year I would say that waiting in a line for almost two hours is insane...but then I think about Harry Potter and how waiting in that line is always about the experience. And now I've had a real Black Friday experience!

Anyway, after saving tons of money, we went home and my mom made me grilled cheese with bacon and then I went to sleep (by this time it was 4:30). And then I slept for 11 hours. Yay Thanksgiving!

things I'm thankful for

I don't think it's acceptable to only be thankful for things on one day of the year, but I think it's totally okay to publicly acknowledge the things that I've been blessed with so here are the top things on my mind:

• My family...but actually!! Baking with my mom and sometimes reluctant sister, watching so much tv, getting technology fixes from my dad, my lolzy brother, shopping - and the prospect of seeing tons of cousins in a few hours - these all make me so happy. :D
• Friends who think that I'm funny. I know I'm funny but sometimes it's hard to appreciate myself because I'm used to my humor all of the time, so it's really nice when my friends tell me how great I am (whether it's in as many words or just by liking my statuses).
• Dorms...how cool is it that I get to live in a building with tons of friends (and potential friends) and so close to my classes and so many other friends?! SO COOL. I love my neighbors. :)
• Laundry machines! And ovens! And laptops and electricity and and and so much technology that makes it easy for me to waste time but also to allocate it more efficiently (like allowing me to stay up late because there's light so I can read or blog or just hang out).
• Economic theories that make my life make sense. I was thinking about economics on my way home from the mall today and about how my purchasing decisions are influenced by many things (potential future discounts, seasonality of clothing, similarity to clothes I already own, prices compared to similar dresses at other stores [substitutes?], expected usage/value, etc.) and also how my driving route is influenced by similar things (utility gained from taking a quick turn now that will take a set amount of time versus waiting to take a turn and potentially hitting many lights but possibly taking less time because of the increased speed limit). My brain is strange.
• Colored pants...I'm so glad this is a thing.
• An amazing/awkward/adorable roommate who will tell me when the things that I'm wearing really don't work.
• Music and its ability to transcend reason and just be, and how cool it is that we get a kick out of certain songs and how that's just a minor reflection of how much God loves it when we praise him.

There are so many more things...basically, I am really and truly blessed beyond measure in the fact that I'm alive and in the brain that I have and in the people I'm surrounded by. Yay turkey day!

drawing

I like to draw things when I get bored, which I imagine is a common thing for people. But I don't usually doodle things nor do I create masterpieces...there are really two cases that I am talking about so I'll break off into them now.

1. I'm in math and the prof is being so boring: I will start drawing a pirate or a mermaid or a bird or something that I've never drawn before, just to see what will happen when I start. Sometimes I'll end up drawing a large scene with a shark about to attack a boat and an octopus just chilling deeper in the water...but these turn more into doodles than actual art. Sometimes I (attempt to) draw people that I know. The only criteria is that it is not a series of numbers/letters which will make me confused later in the week.
2. When I want to draw something for someone...I am a terrible, terrible artist so when this happens I will look up a picture online for me to copy and then when it turns out ok-ish, I feel so proud of myself. The good thing about this is that I retain the skills for later - like now I can draw a Pidgey whenever I want, or at least I would be really good at drawing his beak because I distinctly remember how I learned to do that.

Mostly, it is for procrastination. But I can see how other people would find it to actually be fun and I admire real artists a lot after I draw a unicorn and then realize that one of its legs is missing...oops.

And now I'll share my latest math drawing:

"Whatup birdies" - a Marisa Reed original sketch

pokemon tournament

Living in Stith has a lot of advantages:

1. Across from Lucille/Kelliann = baked goods and always someone awake for me to talk to
2. Beneath Katie/Lauren = easy to communicate with someone silly (I can just hit my ceiling)
3. In general surrounded by friends = good times - (that's a minus) having to see people if I don't want to (I can hide in my room) + Marigene doesn't have to hike across campus to visit
4. Bryan camaraderie with the rest of the fire alarm-ousted residents
5. Close to Zable!
6. Building is connected to the building with the laundry so I don't have to go outside
7. Those things above the closets = excellent storage capabilities

I could go on - I love Stith. But aside from these great advantages and the funness of its name, probably the best part so far has been this Stith Pokemon Tournament. Basically, our RA is the coolest person ever and devised a dormwide competition in which everyone who participates gets a Pokemon of their preferred type and then completes tasks in order to raise their Pokemon's stats (think of this like battling wild Pokemon or Bug Catchers). In order to win you only have to be the last man standing...because the scariest thing is that you can battle each other and whoever has better stats will win. In order to evolve you must eliminate a set number of other Pokemon (it differs by person), which is frightening to me because I don't want to attack people...I play defense. Thankfully this all worked out okay because I turned out to be the nice one in the competition and some people ended up attacking me just so that I could level up because I had already proven that I was committed to doing as many tasks as possible. Anyway, in approximately one hour the competition will be over and I'll have come in second place. Before then, here are some of the highlights:

• Becoming friends with Mo, my main competition. He's a really nice guy but I can't help but be a little bit miffed that he got to start with Mew and I started with Pidgey, which is by all accounts a pretty dumb but not entirely useless Pokemon (I did avoid getting Dodrio and Farfetch'd, so there are some bullets dodged).
• Keeping my type advantage against Dan a secret until he attacked me with five witnesses and had to shamefully run away from battle, only to be killed by me the next morning after I had gained some speed points.
• Eating breakfast in my car to avoid being attacked in my room (this was when Mo had committed himself to eliminating me). Also, taking a nap on a couch in Miller to avoid returning to my room (though this one was slightly more attributable to my laziness as a person and not my fear as a Pokemon trainer). Also, random trips to the grocery store to stall returning to my room.
• Pokemon baked goods - Pokeball cupcakes, Venonat cake and normal brownies all in the same night! (Watching boys bake is very silly but still has delicious results.)
• Random adventure to the Muscarelle for pictures by the lights...only at William and Mary are people so into late night adventures.
• Getting our area director's signature and exploring Tribe Square while at it - IT IS SO PRETTY.
• Trying out Pilates...not really a highlight, but it was an interesting experience.
• Reading epic poems about the Bryan Complex (to which Stith Hall belongs)...lolol.
• Strategizing with Katie and Amy.
• Explaining the game to everyone I have seen in the past two weeks.
• Competing against someone on e-team (Dan) made our team much more fun (not that it wasn't already)...also I think Nate was just as into this as I was.
• Meeting all but five of the residents in my building!

Pretty epic for a hall program in an upperclassmen dorm. Basically I have the best RA ever and some really legit neighbors, including Katie who died not once but twice in battle against me.

bed attack

My bed is currently resting on what are known as risers...plastic cones about 7 inches tall with flat tops so that the feet of a bed can sit on them. This may be really gross or really normal to you (I don't care which), but last Friday was the first time that I changed my sheets since I got to school. Granted this means I slept on them for four weeks, BUT in my defense I did the whole top sheet trickery whereby I slept on top of my top sheet for two weeks and then slept under it for two weeks. I actually have no sense of how often sheets should be changed but I feel like a month is a long time. Usually I just wash them when I need to do laundry and I know it's been longer than I would like to calculate.

Anyway, last Friday I realized how difficult it was going to be to make my bed. It was easy enough to pull out the sheets and mess up my multiple mattress pads/toppers/foam, but it was going to be a difficult feat to tuck my sheets in since two sides were against walls, the end was against my desk and half of the remaining side was against a wall (I'm in The Nook). So I did what seemed natural...I pivoted away my desk (it doesn't actually slide, it actually tilts back and forth when you try to move it) and began pushing my bed away from the window wall. This would have been fine if the risers were somehow attached to the feet of my bed. Unfortunately, as you may have surmised by now, they were not.

The bed naturally came crashing down as two of the risers toppled over due to friction. In attempting to pick the bed up again, I lost another one of the risers. So then my bed was lifted up by one corner, and partially resting on all of the boxes underneath my bed. It was at this point that I noticed that my bed frame was becoming detached. I decided that I should probably leave this job to people stronger than me, aka boys.

This plan would have worked out if I were patient, but I really wanted my bed to be fixed (it was around my usual nap time and it was also raining and all I wanted to do was lie down). Abby and Isabel and I figured that we were as strong as any boy and more crafty to boot, so we (mostly they) worked on reattaching the bed frame. We also thought it would be good to remove my mattress (at this point with new sheets attached) so that the rising of my bed would be easier. This did work out, but only after making a mess of my room what with all of the things that belonged under my bed, plus my newly cleaned sheets, plus my mattress, plus my pillows, plus my nightstand, plus the air conditioner all spread across my floor. Anyway, the bed is fixed and very comfortably separated from my window so that I never have to deal with this again. Catastrophe managed!

Although this is a hilarious story and I'm sure would have made for a classic Friends moment, it was not super fun for me and brought up a lot of things that I don't like to think about; namely, I like doing things by myself, I like being self-sufficient, I like fixing problems, I can have a terrible attitude because of a very silly thing and I hate asking for help. For at least an hour I thought about asking for help but decided to push through with my own efforts; after all, I got myself into this predicament and when I live in the real world I plan on solving all of my problems without a bunch of 20-year-old guys (or any other sort of friends) at my disposal.

Usually when I think about selfishness, I think about other people. I think: I am so good at not being selfish! I am always giving up my comfort for others! I'll get meals at strange times to accommodate someone else's schedule, I'll share my flex, I'll listen to anyone's complaints...how could I be selfish?

But recently I've been realizing that self-absorption can take more forms than not sharing your flex points, or your cookies, or your time. Self-sufficiency is just a sneaky way to glorify yourself. Thinking that I don't need other people only feeds my ego, and thinking that my ideas are better than other people's (even when, occasionally, they are better) reinforces my superior sense of self which is totally false. There is literally no way that I am better than everyone at everything...and even when I limit my scope, throw out sports, music, meeting people and other things that I am professedly not good at...there is no way that I am always better than everyone, let alone anyone at the things I do excel in. Just because I like to organize my life does not mean that other people's methods of organizing are terrible. But these facts do not stop me from thinking that I am amazing at everything.

I need people and cannot live in isolation; nor can I live with self-elevation or even self-preservation. I'm called to live in Christ and to die to my "self," including all of my ego, self-sufficiency, selfish desires and self-fulfillment (the idea that I can make myself happy through my own efforts). Any little bits that I want to hold onto - how good I am at picking the best prices at the grocery store, or how easy it is for me to motivate myself - are fine in practice but they do me no good when I fail to recognize the strengths of others and the weaknesses of myself and my approach to life. I'm not saying I shouldn't have a personality or personal goals, but starting by ditching myself and taking up the cross, it becomes a lot less threatening to ask for help fixing my bed and a lot less rewarding to offer my help to others - because the reward isn't in the esteem I gain from others but in my heart, words and deeds aligning with Christ.

sick warrior

I am so good at fighting off sickness. I like to think that if I just try hard enough I can avoid being ill - like it's some sort of psychological battle and if my will is strong enough my body will never be weak. But when I do become infected, as usually happens at both the beginning and end of a semester, I have a pretty good strategy at recovering and minimizing my sick time.

1. Sleep. I sleep so much that sometimes I think I spend more time asleep than awake. I take naps whenever my head starts to hurt too much to read or whenever I take cold medicine (always the drowsy-inducing children's liquid variety since I don't swallow pills). I sleep for as many hours as I can a night and then sleep some more in the morning. I don't miss class...that's the point of sleeping so much...but between classes and eating I can usually be found with the lights off, curled up in bed (Abby can attest to this). Thursday-Monday this week have gone by extremely fast, mostly because I was asleep for 50% of the time.
2. Vitamin C. On the first hint of a sore throat, I quickly find the nearest source of Vitamin C (usually in orange juice) and spend as much flex as I can on it. Today I had a Naked power-C, which contains 2000% of the recommended amount of daily Vitamin C intake. I also have Vitamin C gummies and am not afraid to use them.
3. Liquids. When I'm not guzzling orange juice, I still have a 24 ounce water bottle with me at all times so I can keep hydrated. I also drink 2-3 cups of tea a day when I'm sick as this makes my throat feel better. Even when I'm not thirsty, I have to have a drink...you can't have too much water when you're sick.

Perhaps I go a little bit overboard for a sore throat, but I don't want to overexert myself and find that I'm even sicker than before. Just like Justin Bieber in Never Say Never (the movie, not the song), I have to take preventative measures at the beginning of an illness so that I don't have to cancel even more events in the future. You may think I'm crazy, but I haven't missed a class due to illness, I haven't missed any important meetings and I'm well on my way to recovery. It's also pretty easy for me because I live a mostly sedentary lifestyle, but on the flip side it takes me a while to force myself into activity once I've deemed myself sick. You can always tell when I'm making myself feel healthy again because I'll make myself go to the rec center or I'll reestablish my ban on naps...but I will still take that Vitamin C for the rest of the fall because people only get more sick as the semester progresses.

afternoon dreams

Afternoon dreams are the worst. I was trying so hard to avoid napping but today I just crashed (partially because I didn't get to sleep until 2:30, partially because I didn't have any caffeine even though I had coffee every previous day this week).

First, I hadn't read this mega popular book series that everyone else had read but I was pretty sure I could guess the plot spoilers anyway. Everyone went to see the movie and I was like, oh that guy in the movie who they think is their evil dad, he's actually a good guy, right? And everyone else was like SPOILERS. And I was like, well, this movie is just terrible at foreshadowing then.

So then we went to play a game. To get to the place where we were playing the game I had to throw a bunch of letters at a giant fish balloon and then they all fell down a slight waterfall and began sinking. I didn't want the letters to get soaked so I jumped in after them, but as soon as I was submerged, I was in a tree house and feeling a little bit damp but my letters were all in tact. Some other people followed me. There was definitely something Peter Pan going on and I didn't understand, but I think that Captain Hook and Mufasa were somehow combined to be the "evil" dad from the movie even though he was secretly a good guy (and his family had abandoned him when the kids were little and now it was the prince's job to reunite his family and avoid a war). He was definitely on a pirate ship but he looked more like King Triton, minus some of the beard, but he had that really good guy quality of Mufasa about him. Anyway, he was both in the movie and somewhere on my mind during the tree house ordeal (I think there was a pirate ship outside and some magic going on in the way that we got to the tree house).

Anyway, there were two things going on in this tree house. First of all, one of my cousins was trying to get all of the rest of my cousins to sing a song with him. This somehow went with the theme because I think he was supposed to have been lied to about his family history and fed only unhealthy food and basically just had a terrible childhood (this is not true in real life). So maybe he was the prince in the movie. Anyway, he looked like my cousin and none of us wanted to sing along with him so he was sad and frustrated because that wasn't what he had come to expect.

Secondly, we had to play a card game. We were trying to fit as many people in the jungle-y tree house as possible so I think it was one of those dreams where I was both in the tree house and not in the tree house. So some version of me sat down to play this game with these strangers who resembled the friends of Hugh Grant's in Four Weddings and a Funeral, which I just watched. And they would NOT explain this game to me. It started off as normal Pokemon but then I kept getting cards with people I knew on them, or weird vines that were "action" cards, and also some new Pokemon that I didn't recognize. Also, some of the cards were portrait while some were landscape which really frustrated me. People went around and drew a card from the center ring, and they could get rid of a card from their hand. But the thing was, there was no real skill to this game: some cards were always good and some were always bad. There were low and high point values but they weren't explicitly mentioned anywhere, you just had to know them.

So it got to be my turn and I admitted that I didn't know what was going on. A guy told me that I should draw a high card and a girl encouraged me to do so, because she might not lose by 65 points again. I said no thanks and I drew a low card, which I think was a bad low card but at least it wasn't a bad high card. Then I asked why there were people I knew on some of the cards and how I was supposed to know what to do with them and then everyone got really angry. So did I. They turned into people that I recognized (like my best friends at school) and they asked me how I didn't know about "Ace Heart Network" which is the fictional group that put these cards together. I said I hadn't heard about them. They said that they were like the biggest group on campus and we'd been playing this card game for like two years and how come I suddenly forgot how to play? I said I was sorry and that I wanted to quit, so I threw down my cards and stood up. But they said that my cards were important so they started looking at them and said I hadn't even arranged them right but they could understand why I quit because they were so bad. Then I was like I still don't understand what this group is, but it sounds like they do good things, and my friend thought I said that it sounds like a bad metaphor which he found hilarious. I tried correcting him but he wouldn't have it so I decided that he just didn't speak English very well, which was little consolation to me. So I started screaming in a RAWR way and everyone started talking louder and trying to give me their opinions but I just tuned them out and sat on the floor.

I woke up wondering who this Mufasa/Captain Hook guy was and where I could find him.

tree friends

When I'm walking around campus sometimes I get really distracted by our trees. They are pretty fantastic-looking and fairly old and sometimes they are just so interesting to me. Sometimes, however, this gets me into trouble. Sometimes I walk right by someone I know and then I figure that they think I'm ignoring them but really I'm just trying to figure out what a particular tree reminds me of - whether it's another tree or a face or an object...whatever it is, it's way more interesting than saying hello to an acquaintance of mine. But then I feel rude if they say hi to me and I have to stop looking at the trees.

There is one tree in particular that I noticed yesterday that I had never really seen before - sure, it was always there, but I didn't notice it until I started looking at the trees on the way home from...well, I don't remember where I was going or coming, I just know that this was one really great tree. It reminded me of people who are always kind of there in my life - but when I really take a good look at them, they suddenly take on a new and exciting appearance. It's like getting a new friend! I guess it is getting a new friend. But back to the trees, I tend to do this with clouds too, though of course clouds change all the time and it's way more exciting to look at trees for this reason: you can always come back to them.

A really tragic thing happened when Irene came through - there was a lot of power lost, but we also lost one of the best trees on campus. While power comes back, this tree isn't going to ever be seen or enjoyed again. I'm talking about the big tree behind (in front of?) Jamestown North. It was perfect for picnicking and provided some great cover to me every time I walked home from campus escort (about a 1 minute walk, but still). It was like a friend that I never took the time to appreciate - never once did I just stare at it and seal its image in my memory. I guess friends are more important than trees, but there's something really great about a tree in that you assume it will always be there for you, and that when it grows it only becomes more useful and can provide you with more shelter, space for contemplation and perspective. I like to think about who planted trees and who watched them grow and who hit them with frisbees and who counted their branches. Especially on this campus, with old buildings, it can be cool to see something that is living and has changed over the years, adapting to new construction and new students every year: a testament to constancy and growth.

Anyway, now every time I pass the really cool tree I'll be happy, but I'm kind of sad that I can't have that special kind of affection for every tree on campus, let alone every person. God has a pretty big job if my feelings toward this one tree (that I just noticed) are any small indication of how he feels toward all of his creation.

friending

I am a huge fan of friending people on Facebook. I didn't used to like it - I was strongly in the "wait to be friended" camp of people which I assume comprises most of the internet. If someone wanted so badly to be my friend, they could just find me themselves; otherwise, they weren't worth the social validation of being my friend online.

College started and I friended a few people, then got a bunch of friend requests as a result of this - so I assumed that it was a fair way of breaking into a group of people. You give a little, you get a lot. I met some people who had never friended a single person in their life, and I realized that this was a very silly group to be a part of just by the way they talked about it. I personally don't think I'm more important than the rest of the world, but sometimes I start feeling like I'm pretty hot stuff...and I think that yielding and friending other people is a good way to combat those feelings that I'm a better class of human.

Now that I'm an upperclassman (again) this is especially true. To me it's like nbd to be friends with a freshman but to them it's like omg a junior I'm so cool now. (Or so I assume, based on the way the way I perceived the world as a freshman.) I also realized that this can be explained through economics! (As can anything.)

So, utility can be thought of as the enjoyment or value you get out of an object, or in this case an action. My change in utility in friending someone is now pretty low. I might have a moment of anxiety where I wonder if they'll think that this is premature in our relationship and that we should have some more awkward encounters before becoming facebook friends, but I've gotten over it so many times that my utility goes down by some arbitrary small amount, which we'll call -1. It takes some sucking up of my ego, but it's not terrible and I'll forget I friended them until I get the notification that they accepted my request; nbd.

I will now estimate the average change in utility someone gets from receiving a friend request from me. Lest you think that my pride is raging right now, I'm doing this from my experience of getting friend requests. There are a couple of situations to consider:

1. We met at a large gathering or are part of a large group. This could be +1 all the way to +5 depending on how brief our encounter was (+1 for just introductions) and how awesome they think I am (+3ish if they think I'm amazing) and how many other people were there and thus the likelihood that they got a lot of friend requests at the same time (so mine is worth +1) or are impressed that I remembered them (+3).
2. We have a ton of mutual friends but have never met in real life (or were introduced but never conversed). This is basically just a +1 because yes it's a friend but it's not really exciting.
3. We've met several times. This is basically a +2 to a +5, depending on if they just love making other people request them or if they actually don't like me but have met me so many times they can't help but expect a friend request (but they don't want to be friends so they didn't initiate it, but they still are happy with the knowledge that they don't need me in their life but I seem to need them). Or they could have just forgotten about facebook. It's an extremely unpredictable variable.
4. We just met once but actually became friends in real life and I went home and immediately friended them. This is a +5 situation, no doubt. They would have friended me if they got to facebook first, and we're both just happy to be friends that it doesn't matter who friended who...it just matters that we write all over each other's walls that we're glad we're actually friends.

I assume that for most people, they don't just friend people as willingly as I do nowadays that I want to be inclusive of everyone, so friending people is probably a -2 to a -5 for them depending on their own sense of pride and/or laziness. Some people also probably get a positive change from friending people but I'm assuming that this is untrue for most people (except in case #4 where we all have the highest utility).

So in conclusion, overall welfare is highest when people actually become friends and then become facebook friends but this isn't always worth waiting for. I estimate that the change in total utility is between 0 and +4 when I friend someone at a time which other people may call premature, but between -4 and +3 when I wait for them to friend me.

Remark: I think that this may only apply to my school/generation because we're really into facebook creeping and it isn't all that weird to be friended before you really feel like friends.

payment

Though money itself doesn't make me happy, the ability to pay for food, movies, gas, etc. makes me feel pretty secure. If I had the bare minimum of money needed to survive, I would freak out and I would be so jealous of people who got to eat Chipotle - but mostly my quality of life wouldn't be any different at this point, because my parents would still be there to provide for me. I've had a pretty good life so far and I've never been in need of anything that I couldn't have (except for power/control, but that's a need that I'm okay with putting off for a few more years). I wouldn't call myself a poor college student, but I'm definitely not going to pay to see a dumb movie and I consider myself fairly money-smart. (I don't go around saving up money to spend it on frivolous things like doilies or new cars.)

Before there was really standardized money, people could still be considered poor by their lack of possessions/animals/land. On that basis I am worth way less than I am with my money - which is really just a promise of future buying ability based on my faith in the American economy. So when I put my trust in money (which is as simple as the feeling of security I have by looking at my bank statement), I am really trusting our society to not collapse. This seems like a pretty risk-free assumption...for now. I would still venture to say that my security is much more firm in my identity in Christ - i.e. that I am the father's creation and that I am loved by him.

But there's a hiccup I must get over before I can say that my security is not in securities.

In the Pentateuch/Torah/Moses's books in the Old Testament, there are a lot of references to uncleanness (mostly in Leviticus). If you get a skin disease, touch road kill, have your period, eat a rabbit/camel/pig/gecko/owl/etc. or touch objects that unclean people have touched, you are unclean. This equates to unholiness - you are not good and not fit to contact other people, let alone God. BUT you can be made clean by making sacrifices. Yay!

Now wait for the connection...it's almost here. So, let's look at Leviticus 14 which is about "cleansing from infectious skin diseases." [Aside: reading this section kind of skeeves me out, but it's required reading for Christian Origins, so I sucked it up. End aside.] There's this whole sacrificial ordeal to go through to make atonement and become cleansed with male lambs and oil being put on right earlobes and so on which seems very silly to me but which I'm sure made sense at the time. Okay, that's all fine and good, but not everyone has two male lambs and a ewe lamb and three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil and one log of oil. Solution?

If, however, he is poor and cannot afford these, he must take one male lamb as a guilt offering to be waved to make atonement for him, together with a tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, a log of oil, and two doves or two young pigeons, which he can afford, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. (Leviticus 14:21-22, NIV)

Cool. So to me this begs the question...why on earth would you sacrifice three lambs when you could just be all like, oh I'm poor, I can only afford to sacrifice one lamb? The only logical conclusions that I have are: a) you would feel guilty for lying; or b) you would probably feel less unclean if you had the full sacrifice. We also have the issue of people who could just barely afford the full sacrifice and would have to decide whether or not it would be worth it to become poor, but I'm assuming that most people could spare three lambs and if they couldn't they would be so poor that they wouldn't even have one lamb and they would have to borrow it from a rich person anyway. I don't know the wealth distribution or average standard of living in ancient Israel so I'm going to say that this exception is probably only for the very, very poor and that it wasn't an ideal sacrifice and that people would be willing to use three lambs to cleanse themselves, because I feel like cleanness is worth any cost.

Regardless of that, I'm really glad that my cleanness doesn't depend on how much I can afford. I really don't have anything to offer that God wants - which works out well, because all he demands is my heart. My money and security are his too, but they, like everything else, come along with my submission. When Jesus died on the cross, there was no need for lamb/blood sacrifices or grain sacrifices anymore. This makes things easier because I don't have to go see a priest or wait seven days but it makes things harder because I have to be very intentional and instead of giving up only my possessions I have to give up my authority, pride, plans and, yes, my security and identity in my talents and possessions.

But on the brightest end note of all, I have the greatest identity ever (as God's child, not as Marisa) and in giving up all of those extraneous things to him, I don't have to worry about money or my future or my salvation.

housewivery

Reasons I would make a good housewife:

• I make excellent baked goods
• I LOVE DOING LAUNDRY
• I can't go to sleep if there's a mess
• I would be so good at organizing everything in the house
• I am a quality multitasker
• I can go to bed late and wake up early - and I could nap at the same time as the children!
• I could teach the kids how to read etc.
• I would be so good at paying bills
• I am a very efficient shopper
• I'm pretty good at being by myself for long periods of time
• I can drive a minivan
• I can be pretty crafty when need be
• I can repair clothing
• I'm excellent at remembering important dates

Reasons I would not make a good housewife:

• I can't kill bugs
• I'm afraid of uncooked meat and also eggs (but if they're mixed in cake mix they're okay)
• I would be sad that I wasn't putting my education to practical use
• I would definitely get in those typical arguments with my husband about how he doesn't do enough with the kids when he gets home from work
• I can't whistle
• Irons scare me
• I'm afraid of stereotypes
• I want to be able to dress up every day - but at home that would just make me a June Cleaver

Hmm. It's still a viable option but it's definitely not my life plan.

dear gps

Where do you think we are

Driving 'round in our car

I don't even know where to start

Maybe I'll call OnStar

You're gonna get us lost

As driver I'm the boss

So go recalculate

Where do you think we are?

irene

Good things about a hurricane occurring on the first weekend after classes start:

• I haven't even had to do laundry yet so I got to bring it home and now I won't have to do it for like another two weeks
• I got to bring home some unnecessary things that I had packed/stored in Williamsburg for the summer
• BONDING - excellent car ride music and movie-watching and games and adventures - in general this promises to be a fun break
• So little homework - all classes have only met once so they can't expect us to know anything yet, so it's a four-day weekend with no worries!
• Extra time to buy textbooks and have them shipped to school
• I can buy groceries at home now that I know what I need!
• I can celebrate my mom's birthday with her!
• Getting the extra time to watch The Glee Project and other things that weren't going to happen this weekend otherwise
• Greater ability to watch Pokemon at home
• Possibility of fun power outage adventures

Bad things about a hurricane occurring on the first weekend after classes start:

• We haven't even done enough work to warrant a break...I really just want to be doing work
• There were so many epic things planned for this weekend that are now being canceled/postponed. Convocation, sure; large group, definitely; but mostly...I wanted Screen on the Green!
• Next weekend we will have a ton of make-up work to keep us on schedule, plus everything from this past weekend, plus everything that was already planned for next weekend...TOO MUCH STUFF
• I don't even think we would have been affected by Irene
• Natural disasters/severe weather conditions in general are bad news
• I was just getting used to my room and now I miss it and my roommate and everyone else who didn't come home with me
• There wasn't a whole lot of advance notice so I don't have good plans on how to best spend this time
• Possibility of power outages or other not so fun adventures

first day of school

I am already blogging way more than I thought I would when I got back to school, but I think I'm okay with this.

Mostly I just wanted to express my enthusiasm for the first day of school, and also I don't have anything to do until class (in 34 minutes). [Side note: sometimes I break the rules of grammar ironically and I think it's funny but I recognize that some people are probably annoyed or think that I don't actually understand English. I just like run-on sentences, though not in academic settings.] But I don't think anyone else understands my excitement for classes to start. It's great that everyone's back on campus but really I have just been waiting to meet my professors and figure out my homework schedule and get super organized. It's also the easiest week of college and is my favorite week, followed closely by dress week and finals. Everything else is basically the same, repeated thirteen times.

I don't like to dress too nicely on the first day because I don't want to look like I'm trying too hard (like all those girls wearing dresses today...no offense if you are, but it is not hot enough to persuade me to wear a dress when I have to sit in classrooms today). It's kind of worrisome when I have to decide how many notebook pages I will likely use for a given class and then decide how many subjects I can fit in one notebook (I go from the front for one subject and start from the back for another, if I estimate that I can) - but it's also fun and it's good to just pick and then know, because I need to work on establishing the notebooks in my memory so that I don't bring the wrong one to class.

I also have to think about where I want to sit in a class. Depending on the class I may like the front best...or not. If it's a standard classroom set up I don't want to be behind a tall person and I want to be BFFs with my prof so I sit up front, but in a lecture classroom I want to be able to see all the people in the room so I'll sit in the middle/back but on the side (never the middle of a row) for easy late arrivals and early departures. Basically I just want to sit near the door, because I have a tendency to get to class late (only by like a minute). But if I see someone who I want to sit with then that will override all of my other concerns, at least for the first day. After that I will probably arrive early and sit in the place where I want to sit, because there's no point in being mad at a friend all semester for picking a terrible seat.

Another major source of worry for me (this started five months ago) is the impending task of setting my lunch schedule. As soon as I signed up for classes I started thinking about this. It's my least favorite part of the beginning of the semester, so it's probably fair to say that my feelings toward the first week and the second week are polar opposites (it is a major week for establishing free times). I don't want to commit to eating with someone who I don't like very much or with too many people at once or all of my meals at Sadler, so it's kind of stressful in that I do need to eat but I don't want to make my availability completely open to everyone. This comes back to the point of me being too popular for my own good, though this isn't really true - most of this is probably in my head. But I do try to have more friends than I have time for on a weekly basis so I need to schedule some people into my life but I need to have free time so I can see some people on a monthly (or so) basis but for an extended period of time (like an entire afternoon).

So sometimes I end up skipping a meal or going to Wawa or eating cereal, mostly unintentionally, but sometimes for the express purpose of avoiding making a decision. I'm also on a block meal plan this semester so I need to schedule out my meals fairly carefully and I can't just go to Sadler and see if there's anything edible.

Anyway, I'm still excited for classes and homework and reading so it's probably a good thing that I still have three and a half more first days of college.

target etc.

Target is basically my favorite place in the world. In terms of stores that I go to, it is definitely number one for both frequency and length of visit. In terms of places that make me happy, it is probably third (after my car and Hogwarts)...given the competition, though, it is probably actually the best seeing as I've never been to Hogwarts and the novelty/love for my car diminishes with use.

Actually, I'll just make a list of my favorite places.

1. My car. I love driving...long highway drives, reparking trips, sitting and waiting for the rain to subside...it is wonderful. I have my cd's and my air freshener and my keys and I can go other places but really I would be content, most of the time, to just stay in the car. It's great for being by yourself and for being with limited numbers of people!
2. Hogwarts. But actually.
3. Target. I could talk about Target all day. I couldn't stay there that long, though. It is very easy to navigate and has almost everything you could wish for at a reasonable price and is way classier than Walmart. I love their commercials and I love how clean it is and how convenient it is and how wonderful everything there is.
4. IKEA.
5. Morton Hall...though it is sinking into the ground it continues to make me really happy and I love Mortonfalls and I could probably just live there forever and ever.
6. Monroe!
7. The mailboxes in Sadler Center because they are so organized but still manage to get so messy.
8. My bed.
9. The back room.
10. Leah's attic.
11. That semi-secret bench behind the echo garden (which is also cool but way more touristy).
12. Georgetown Cupcake.
13. Miller (more precisely Boehly Cafe)...I wish I could eat there every day. Actually, I will be looking into the feasibility (and optimality) of this.

Now I am getting hungry and could list like twenty more places where I would like to eat, but those places do not make me as happy as the rest of the list which also just conveniently ended on the 13th place.

I got distracted by my list-making need, but just remember, Target is awesome and is preferable to any other store unless you want to take me to Ollivander's.

non-secrets

I love PostSecret more than I love a lot of things, but probably less than I love cupcakes and dresses. It's probably right up there with my extremely comfortable bed and organizing my dresses based on their expected number of uses, though.

Anyway, it's a site where people anonymously send in secrets (though some of them aren't really secrets) on postcards and the owner of the site (Frank Warren) sorts through them and puts the best ones online (and even more go in books that you can buy). He came to campus last semester and I went to hear him talk and it was cool and all, but I already knew most of what he had to say because I visit PostSecret every Sunday (that's when new secrets come out) - and I have been doing so for the past four years. So yeah, you could say that I was ahead of that trend.

All that to say, probably my favorite secret of all time was posted today. Okay, that's not really true for two reasons: 1) it's one of those ones that's not really a secret; 2) my favorite is probably the one about the girl who has lied her entire life about being allergic to peanut butter but secretly likes it and eats it. But it's my favorite in a while. Enough with the preamble, here it is!

http://www.postsecret.com/

Okay, but you didn't think I'd let you get away without a postamble, did you? So this postcard and the sermon today at Grace Covenant spoke to me for a lot of reasons. I'm currently stressing out about approximately seven million things (not all of which are problems) even though I really don't have anything stressful going on right now (at least not until next week when classes start!). Mostly, I just want to know if I'm taking the right classes and allocating my time and energy effectively and what I'm doing after graduation and how that should influence what I'm doing now annnnd a bunch of more specific things and more general things and it's just a lot of things that I'm thinking about and wishing I had more definite answers on. But that's silly.

I am where I am and I don't think that's a mistake; I know what I know and I can't do anything about that except educate myself (which is what I'm attempting to do by, you know, going to school); I don't need a road map, I need a navigator - and I need to stop trying to do my life by myself. I'm so focused on my future and trying to plan for it that I'm not content with where I am and I'm definitely not in a mindset to make the most of this semester...so that is something that I will be thinking about and something that I will need to be called out on multiple times because I am very good at thinking about change but not so good at enacting it, and really not so good at being where I am.

Tangent: I also think that this is just part of my personality, which in some ways excuses me from changing but in other ways encourages me to be even more proactive about combating my tendency to not do things (not necessarily in a lazy way, though I am feeling particularly Snorlax-y lately). I really think that the whole INTJ thing is spot-on and the analysis of this personality type is quite good at explaining my weirdness. It also makes me a little bit worried because if approximately 2% of the population is INTJ then there have been, in the past, of the say 100 billion people who lived before 1970, 50 billion women and so around 500 million women who have lived with the same general weirdness (INTJ types being fairly characteristically weird in my opinion) as me but who didn't have very intellectually stimulating professions - so what makes me so lucky to be allowed to have an interesting and important job (okay, I'm being optimistic about real life here but I think it's still an interesting argument) - and what would I think of myself if I didn't pursue that opportunity? So I need to be the most me I can be, which will certainly involve effort and busyness but I think that I can do that in a much better mental state and with a lot more trust and obedience than how I've been doing things.

And that's my mostly non-secretive life.

summer reading, conclusion

What I actually read this summer:

1. I started reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone right after Rockbridge and decided that I would need a very rigorous schedule of reading to complete the series before July 15...
2. so then I read six chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets a day, and did the same with
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Since I did so well, I allowed myself to slow down to five chapters a day for
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but I got slowed down severely by my trip to Florida so I had a bit of a mad dash at the end of my time.
7. I literally read over half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the day that the movie came out...I had a headache afterwards but I don't think I'd have it any other way.
8. Then I finally finished Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World which I had to keep putting on hold for Harry Potter, though it was very good!
9. My summer being almost over, I still had a lot of reading to do so I pretty quickly blasted through Sense and Sensibility which would usually take me like a month to read (instead I took three days).
10. I read all of Predictably Irrational on the train to Lynchburg (it may have been my favorite read of the summer)
11. then I read Buy-ology and
12. Nine Stories (a very good collection of short stories) and
13. Witch and Wizard while at the beach getting my tan on
14. but I saved The Importance of Being Earnest for the train ride home.
15. Finally, I read The Tempest while packing for school.
16. I read half of Animal Spirits (I plan on finishing it soon)
17. and two thirds of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz randomly at the bookstore...I need to read how it ends because it does have a subplot that got left out of the movie!

So, pretty successful, but kind of disappointing given my ridiculously high standards for summer reading and the fact that I definitely had time to read way more. Oh well - winter break will be here soon enough!

things I don't believe in

• Bobby pins.
• Paying for drinks at restaurants. Just get free water!
• Pokemon past Mew, with the exception of Togepi.
• Digimon.
• Having a twitter (it would be okay if I were a celebrity, I think).
• Google+.
• Reality shows about finding love.
• iPads (and Apple products in general...I begrudgingly own an iPod).
• Throwing or catching things when it would be just as easy to hand them over without the very serious possibility of disaster or the very likely probability of disruption.
• Dyeing my hair (other people's hair is okay to dye - just not mine). I have gorgeous hair! I would be so afraid that I wouldn't be able to get my wonderful blonde back if I ever dyed it.
• Taking pass/fail classes. No, just do the work!
• Manicures. I am actually scared of them. I just don't think nail salons are the most sanitary places.
• Tanning beds slash fake tanning slash Jersey Shore obsessions.

I would say that I am okay with ironically liking these things, but then again I've already shown how easily I slip from ironic to actual obsession, so for now I'm going to go on the safe side and just say that I "don't believe in them" - meaning I don't like/do them but I also don't really care about what other people do regarding these subjects. It's as if they just don't exist.

summer 2011 recap

Things I did this summer, very roughly in chronological order:

• Reunited with Muna and Leah and Melanie after way too long of an absence; got Georgetown Cupcakes
• Rockbridge: reunited with Jenn, taught Melody sass (more to follow in the fall), said goodbye to Benton forever (but got his bed risers - fair trade?)
• Saw Katie (not Komo), Steph, Mrudula
• Acquired and lost a pet bat
• Got SO MUCH FROYO
• Reread all of the Harry Potter books, only cried once
• Caught up on Glee, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, The Office, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad; started watching The Glee Project
• Assembled shelves, sorted books and other things to help my grandma move
• Watched Never Say Never for the second time
• Went to bible study with the Bylers (get some quality Medina/Haset hangs)
• Visited high school; felt old
• Saw Hangover 2, X-Men First Class, Adjustment Bureau, TiMER, Super 8, Captain America, Friends with Benefits, Thor, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
• Visited Williamsburg twice; shopped at Target because it's not like I have two of these at home; got lots of noms; spread the infectious game of Hearts
• Watched Chelsea graduate; felt super old
• Saw Tyler, Jessica, Megan...and of course New Moon?
• Sent extraordinarily long and intimidating peer advising emails
• Isabel/Katie/Jamie/Danyah DC visits (my exercise for the summer)
• Made Megan watch The Two Towers; quoted the entire movie with Jamie
• Drove to Florida with Melanie and went to DISNEY WORLD! And HOGWARTS!!! (and got burned at the beach)
• Harry Potter premiere, bd bd bd
• Watched Never Say Never for the third time
• Visited Katie; went to beach; learned to ride a bike; tried Bojangles
• Read nine and two-half non-Harry Potter books
• Worked on super secret craft projects
• Saw Melodie!!!
• Heard about Leah's Copenhagen life, felt nonproductive
• Visited Muna at Teavana, and generally built up an addiction to breakfast tea over the course of three months
• Fit most of my belongings in the trunk of my car (okay, this does not include any of my clothes or the roughly 2/3 of my stuff that is still in Landrum attic, but no one's counting)
• Blogged so much I sometimes doubt I'll have anything left to say (this is a distinct improbability given the complexities of any given human brain and my particular ability to find boring things incredibly noteworthy...also I still have 21 drafts so if I suddenly lose inspiration I'll have at least three weeks to gain it back)
• Listened to my summer playlist at least seven times
• Discovered Navigation on my phone
• Consistently took vitamins
• Made lots of new and exciting baked goods

Things I wanted to do this summer but didn't accomplish:

• Go to Splash Down (this was so close to being an actuality)
• Finish watching Friends (but now I have something to watch over winter break)
• Watch The Big Bang Theory (saw one episode, didn't like it)
• Watch lots of Toddlers and Tiaras with Taylor
• Watch Bridesmaids and Source Code
• Read The Return of Depression Economics, Jane Eyre, Lord of the Rings and Nudge (but my list was fairly extensive so I'm okay with putting these off)

Okay, so I didn't have a job but I feel like I had a pretty successful three months nevertheless.

last day of summer

Today was everything that a summer day should be, which is perfect because tomorrow is laundry/packing day and Thursday is moving day and after that there's no more room for summer. Allow me to recap:

• Step one: sleep in, wake up at indeterminable hour (11? 1? 9:30?).
• Step two: breakfast, make tea (add almond milk), read newspaper (especially the help columns).
• Step three: business, take care of Facebook notifications and emails from people who wake up before me.
• Step four: shower, but only out of social necessity.
• Step five: Target, even though I didn't need anything.
• Step six: second meal (when it's past 3pm I guess it could just be called a summer lunch).
• Step seven: make cheesecake, nbd.
• Step eight: Shakespeare, finish The Tempest.
• Step nine: adventure with Chelsea, see Muna, drink lots of tea.
• Step ten: sit outside and talk about how awesome summer nights are.
• Step eleven: two buck Tuesday, see Pirates 4 and get popcorn and soda for $6.
• Step twelve: intend to clean bathroom, never even attempt.
• Step thirteen: CRAFT TIME plus food network!
• Step fourteen: blog.

Okay, well, that's not entirely accurate. I actually had a lot of craft time interspersed throughout the day - but the majority of it occurred between 12:45 and 3:30 this morning. I am in the process of finishing all of the crafts that I ambitiously started at the beginning of the summer and never really had time to work on. These are Super Secret crafts and the only person who knows the full extent of them is my mom, who is also my Craft Mentor and Project Manager. She has every possible kind of glue, paper, ink, marker or scissor I could ever imagine needing, and when I can't figure out how to make a project work, she has about five alternate ideas for me. The best thing is that she's working on her own projects (from making me a purse with a magnetic close to designing cards, she perennially has things to craft) - and we can watch tv while we're working.

Without revealing any Super Secret Craft secrets, I can say that I have a new appreciation for Mod Podge. I always thought this stuff was cool, but I have never used more in my life. I think I might develop carpel tunnel syndrome from lathering mod podge. It just makes everything look shiny and wonderful, and I can never put too many coats on. And the reason that craft time takes so much time throughout the day is that I have to wait for mod podge to dry before I can put on another layer. Sometimes there are other things I can work on while I wait for one project, but now that I'm getting down to the end I've found myself just watching tv and waiting for my 15-20 minutes to pass in complete nonproductivity.

On a completely unrelated note, the other reason that my breakdown of today is not entirely accurate is that it conveys the idea that I have been this productive/active every day (by active I still mean mostly sitting, but I did at least travel to different places with my car). The image of me being productive every day this summer is very false. Today was an unusually diverse day - but on an actual typical day of my summer, I wake up, breakfast, Facebook, lunch, Facebook, maybe read, dine on dinner, watch some tv, craft, Facebook, sleep. Or if I do go out, I won't have time to read or I won't craft. Today was quite the exception - it's probably because I've started hearing the clock ticking until I leave and I don't want to leave projects undone or books unread or adventures missed out on. And I guess there's also the fact that at school my down time consists almost entirely of sleeping, so I have to shift myself to an active(ish) lifestyle in the least abrupt way possible. There will be three major changes between now and next week: I will have gone to sleep before 2am, I will not have cheesecake readily available to me and I will not discover mod podge on my forearms when I wake up.

dresses

I love dresses. This is a very recent development in my wardrobe, probably due to watching so much Project Runway (I have seen every episode; we're on season 9). My favorite designs are cute, ready-to-wear dresses that I just want to steal from the work room and wear. I guess a little bit of innovation is okay sometimes, but as one-note as it was I still love Leanne's collection.

I get that the judges like to see different things, but this collection does have a range of styles and fabrics. It just happens to look like basically the same three things over and over again. I wouldn't actually wear any of these dresses - but that is because I already own too many dresses.

Some time between when I started watching Project Runway (2008) and today, I discovered that I owned a crazy number of dresses (currently it is 32, though a couple of them are very loosely defined as dresses and are more like cover-ups or really long shirts). I probably had a few before I watched the show - but not many. I only went to one high school dance and we weren't allowed to wear tank tops to school so my main venue for wearing dresses was church. This would have still afforded me plenty of reasons to own lots of dresses (you can't repeat church dresses very often) but my church doesn't require dresses. I would get a new one every spring or summer just to add to my wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts so that I could wash my jeans and shorts less often. But that period of my life was not to last.

When I was younger, I had all kinds of dresses - cute little girl dresses, dress-up dresses, Easter dresses, match-my-sister dresses, match-my-doll dresses. And then I became Too Good For Dresses. I was fine in my shorts, thank you very much. I outgrew my old dresses and didn't bother to replace them. If I had to dress up, I had nice pants and a few emergency dresses. But Project Runway transformed my life. I got a dress for a wedding - a birthday party - then a grad party - then I got a dress for a vacation - graduation - I couldn't be repeating outfits, everyone would know! (This was also the beginning of my use of Facebook, and I contribute my paranoia to the fact that I wasn't actually being paranoid, just aware of my changing society and its expectations.) And then I got to college. I still didn't consider myself a Dress Person - I had about three to choose from for convocation and I was surprised when I learned that I had to use one's first appearance up so soon. That semester, I was kept in check by a lack of access to stores and a wariness of online shopping.

But as soon as I got home, I found that I was in Target withdrawal. The first thing I did, after immediately and completely unpacking, was get Chipotle (of course) and then go to Target and buy a dress. I felt good about this purchase even though it was a summer dress and winter had just started. Another semester passed (I got a dress for King and Queens).

Summer came - but first, Rockbridge. And I had to have a new dress for Rockbridge, for the end of the week photo sesh. None of my current dresses seemed nice or floral enough for such an occasion, and besides, I had worn them all recently. Look at this picture: where would I have been without a floral dress?! Clearly, they would've disowned me. I went and got a dress to avoid this embarrassment.

When I got home from Rockbridge, I had a week and a half to chill at home and watch the finale of Lost. In that time I decided that I was seriously in need of dresses - I considered myself deprived. Where had all of my dresses gone? Had they just disappeared when I left for college? I assumed that I had way more than I did - but I was just looking at my past wardrobe through rose-colored glasses and assuming that I had a proper number of dresses throughout high school. This was false. In any case, I was desperate for a nice dress that I could wear out to lunch or to church, something casual but classy.

I went to JC Penney and came home with four dresses. All of them were fantastic finds, and all of them fulfilled that gap in my wardrobe, but I felt extravagant. I felt like I had truly become a Dress Person. And I embraced it. I met this girl, Taylor, who loved Pokemon and Disney songs and dresses and chemistry (I forgive her) and had a pretty blue car and I decided that we had a lot in common. I had found another Dress Person. Over the summer I got a lot of use of my new dresses, wearing maybe two a week (except some days I just sat in my room and watched videos all day because it was so hot outside...I did not get good use of my dresses or myself on those days).

Now we've arrived at sophomore year. I made my first online clothing purchase. And my second (this one for campus golf). I don't really believe in buying things online because you have to pay for shipping and you can't try it on or even feel it or see its colors in different lights, but sometimes, when you see the perfect dress, you just have to buy it. I still had to talk myself into buying them (with help from my roommate).

And then came Dress Week. Taylor and I realized that we had a ton of dresses. I realized that there was no way I was going to get use out of all of them unless I started wearing multiple dresses a week - I actually had enough that I could go a whole month with nothing but dresses (February, but who's counting?). Of course, a lot of these would be fancy dresses and that would be kind of silly. So a week of dresses sounded like a much better plan. This would also allow people with smaller dress obsessions, and less commitment to crazy ideas despite weather fluctuations, to participate. And being me, I knew that this week wouldn't be any good without photographic evidence of its existence. Hence, Dress Week occurred this April 10-15 (I think I skipped Saturday because I wore two dresses on Friday due to King and Queens and also because I was tired of looking so great and also I had to wear a t-shirt for the activities fair, but I don't really remember which justification I used at the time). We invited lots of friends to participate in a Facebook event (because nothing is official if it's not on Facebook), and lots of pictures were taken and joy was had by all. It actually was super great for several reasons:

1. I got to see Taylor and Katie every single day!
2. I was so popular - everyone was texting me being all like, where u at (this was Katie) so that we could take pictures together.
3. I looked good for a whole week...believe me, that is a real win in the college girl's war with apathy/busyness.
4. I got to see a lot of people who I don't normally see during the week - because everyone has time to take a quick picture outside on a beautiful day!
5. It was a super busy week leading up to an even busier one, and if I did not have dresses and friendship to make me happy I would have been pretty stressed out. Instead, it was just a challenge to get as many pictures as possible!

But there were some parts that made me sad:

1. I didn't get to take my picture with a lot of people who were wearing dresses that week.
2. It was really, really cold on Wednesday so I wore a dress for part of the day but wore a skirt for another part of the day (I don't remember how that worked out - I'm getting old).
3. I didn't wear a dress on Saturday. That would have been nice.
4. I felt like I couldn't wear any of those dresses ever again because there was public documentation of each of them. I didn't repeat any of them that semester (I only had four weeks left). It made it incredibly difficult to pick a dress to bring to Rockbridge. It was like having six Rockbridge photo shoots, except way less intense and all featuring me. So, not really like it at all.

Despite these shortcomings, I anticipate a return of Dress Week, which was essentially the best week of the semester.

This summer I somehow found myself with four new dresses, though I wasn't intending to add any more to my bulging closet. Now I have to choose which ones to take to school and which ones to leave here, and I wrote this blog to help me procrastinate. I love all of my dresses and I wouldn't want to ignore any of them - because if I leave a summer dress here, I won't wear it again until April at the earliest. I have enough dresses for any regular-sized month, but I still don't know how many to bring back to school to avoid over-filling my closet, wasting space in my car and of course getting a dress extra wrinkly for no reason. I am just putting way too much effort into trying to plan all of my outfits for the next four months which is really, really silly. And yet...I still want to make the best decision possible. And I still haven't made up my mind about anything.

I always have the most valid, tragic complaints in my life.

Speaking of which - this is my last tangent - it's kind of funny how I've adjusted to a new level of dresses, but it's not that surprising. Today, if I suddenly only had three dresses I would panic - what if I wanted to wear a purple dress? But before I was fine. This also happens with wealth. Just because I have a ton of dresses doesn't mean that I'm satisfied with my dress collection - in fact, it makes me more aware of the dress types that I don't have. Similarly, if I suddenly doubled my income, I would spend a lot of it on things that would slightly improve my standard of living, but I would still see people way richer than me and be unsatisfied. Never mind the fact that I'm richer than my previous neighbors - now, in my bigger house, I have all this extra space so I need a bigger tv and I'd better get a new car because everyone else is getting a new car. This is actually not true - I would know better than to get a bigger house - and my current income is clearly not enough to get me a house (I'm unemployed, so doubling my income would literally not do anything) - but it's something to think about when I really, really want one of those classy dresses I could wear to work, despite the fact that I still don't work.

I have so many first world problems.

ikea

"There are not enough words to describe my love for IKEA" - this would be a perfectly adequate blog post on its own. And yet, though its conciseness would convey my seriousness, I have way more to say on the subject of IKEA!love.

1. First, good font choices on signs etc. - everything is easy to read and friendly. (Somehow I missed the recent controversy - I am a much bigger fan of Futura.)
2. The carts at this store run amazingly smoothly (?). It's like ice-skating on a freshly-Zambonied rink, except way LESS DANGEROUS. It's like the carts pull the customers along on a ride through a land of home goods. If I were to create an amusement park, IKEA would be my favorite attraction.
3. I haven't checked it out, but there's a whole place for kids to go play! And there are really good deals on kid-sized meals and the furniture is so much cuter for kids.
4. I could probably talk about any given room in any section of this store for an hour. I will refrain.
5. The IKEA scene in 500 Days of Summer is one of my favorite parts of any movie.
6. I LOVE that there are maps everywhere and arrows on the floor telling you where to go - but also "shortcuts" to different parts of the store. It is so cute. And so organized.
7. The single word product names (most of which are Swedish) are just so fun - but also really useful, because there's no mistaking similar objects (so long as you get the name right).
8. The restaurant serves delicious desserts and decent entrees! There are some great things in there...I highly recommend stopping to eat on your next IKEA visit.
9. Everything is really well explained. Like, why do I have to clear my own table? How do I find my furniture once I've picked it out? And even, from an otherwise somewhat ambiguous entrance, where do I start shopping?
10. It is impossible to leave without getting something that you hadn't anticipated - but this isn't a bad thing. There will be something that you didn't even know that you needed, but once you see it, you feel somehow...complete. Successful. Happy. Now, I'm not really a shopper, but there is something very satisfying about falling in love with a cute product and then instantly obtaining it (as opposed to online shopping or even going to a cute store and expecting to find something cute and then getting it).
11. It's not just consuming - it is an entirely unique experience, and everything is arranged in a way to make me happy. It's easy to understand, but not boring; I can walk through at my own pace and linger in one room for twenty minutes and then skip three entire sections - but it's just laid out so nice and clear that it is way more fun than a regular store. It's like you're supposed to interact with the furniture, test it out and have fun. It's like they took my ideal furniture store right from my brain and created it in a real warehouse, and everything is the way that I want it to be - except they don't have every possible piece of furniture that I would like to buy (if you're looking for something specific but it's not in their catalog you will not have a fun shopping experience). Otherwise...it's just a fantastic place.

That all said, I think that IKEA would be a terrible place to go with someone who you don't know very well because of the overwhelming possibilities for disagreement, from whether a bookshelf is tasteful or not to how long you really need to spend looking at rugs. It's also a really exhausting store. Thankfully, they have food strategically placed at the end of the top floor and right after you check out on the bottom floor, so you really could spend all day in this wonderful world.

rotten tomatoes

In case you didn't realize it already, I actually have pretty good taste when it comes to movies. I like cinematography, I like witty but realistic conversations, I even seek out indie films sometimes. Though there are a lot of silly movies that I enjoy, generally a movie has to blow me away for me to consider it good...and then I will happily rewatch it several times. You could say I'm a film snob - and I'm sure a lot of my friends will agree with this. There are a lot of movies I have refused to pay money to see even though my friends were going to see them:

• No Strings Attached
• Black Swan (this wasn't about the quality of the movie but about my complete lack of interest)
• Killers
• Love Happens
• All About Steve
• The Covenant
• I Am Legend
• Tropic Thunder (saw it on dvd, thought it was okay)
• Charlie Bartlett
• Eclipse (I admit that I saw the others at my sister's request)

I can't just trust one critic to tell me whether a movie is good or not - I want all of them; I want a consensus; I want Rotten Tomatoes. I can generally tell when a movie is going to be good or not, but there are some movies that I really can't judge from their previews. I could say with 100% conviction that Avatar: The Last Airbender was going to be bad last summer, but I still wanted to see it because I really like Shaymalan movies that other people don't like and because it was midnight and because there's really not much else to do in Williamsburg. I didn't need RT to tell me it was bad - I ignored their words of warning. Ironically I found the opposite true of the consensus on Avatar, the blue-person movie - though it received an 83%, I found the movie incredibly boring, exceedingly long and astoundingly overpraised. In general, though, I take Rotten Tomatoes as a definitive authority on the quality of a movie.

But this maybe isn't the most logical approach. The percentage that RT gives is of the critics who saw the movie who thought it was, in a choice between acceptable and unacceptable, passingly fair. You have to read the reviews to know if they thought it was actually good. PSA: Rotten Tomatoes does not highlight the average rating of a movie, though it does provide this information; it merely highlights the percent of critics who gave it a positive review. And that's the problem - the movies with high percentages appeal to the widest range of critics, so it's kind of like an estimated likelihood that you will find the movie decent. That is simply not good enough for me. I don't want to spend $11 and two hours on something that I have a 30% chance of deeming a total waste. Let's look at what I mean.

So, really, this is saying that 97% of critics liked the movie but that its actual grade is 84%. Similarly, 92% of regular people liked it but its grade from audiences is 88%. (There is also the question of response bias here, in that only people with strong opinions took the time to rate the movie at all...but my feeling here is that you shouldn't go see this movie unless you already like Harry Potter and also won't be surprised if they completely mangle the plot, so really the RT score doesn't matter.)

That said, RT is a tool that you can use, and it's a very useful one given that it has so many critics' input, but you still have to use your own judgment when deciding what category a movie belongs in: opening night must-see, acceptable diversion of time and money if the opportunity arises, worth the wait for dvd, maybe okay if it's on tv in three years or avoid like the plague. If I want to see a movie based on its previews, it still has to get at least a 75% approval rating before I'll go, with few exceptions. Sometimes RT is most helpful in deciding between similar movies - like Green Lantern vs. Captain America. Obviously if both got great reviews I would have seen them both...and I probably would have seen Captain America anyway given my interest in The Avengers...but I saved myself from disappointment by not seeing Green Lantern, which I had high hopes for before the reviews started coming out.

I've found that it's good to find one or two critics who have a similar sensibility toward movies as yourself and follow their advice, since every person has a different definition of "good movie." I trust Roger Ebert's opinion like no other - I have disagreed with probably three of his reviews ever, though I clearly don't have the time to see all of the movies that he likes. But I respect his opinion a lot and have been glad to see that he takes movies for what they are and judges them based on criteria within their genres: he notes, for example, that a movie targeted toward young adults does a good job of relating to that generation.

Also, sometimes I have found myself forced into seeing a movie with friends. I always stand against what I consider to be a bad movie - but there is also a point where you should just give in and suspend your inner, raging critic for the sake of maintaining a social life and not being a total elitist. And sometimes it's fun to go and see a movie that you haven't read anything about, even though I am usually a fan of reading spoilers and speculations (perhaps why I loved Lost, Harry Potter, etc. as the stories were unfolding. Also, I would really like to know who wins The Glee Project and not have to wait two weeks).

Fun facts to leave you with: instead of going to senior homecoming, I saw Eagle Eye...and instead of going to senior prom I saw Star Trek in IMAX. I maintain that these were much more enjoyable experiences than my alternatives and that I totally optimized my utility. No regrets.

morbid interests

I am finally the owner of a Turbie Twist. I have been intrigued by these since I learned of their existence some 12 years ago, in the days of my long hair. For those of you who didn't know me back then, I grew my hair to the point where I could sit on it if I really tried and then would get it trimmed like two inches and repeat this process ad naseum, or until I was 16. Then I had moderately long hair which I always considered short until this March when I got it cut at a length which I consider extremely short and other people consider normal.

Anyway, this product is magical. It cuts my hair-drying time down significantly which is impressive given that my hair is so short now that it only takes about a half hour to dry (as opposed to 1.5ish hours).

But I realized that I have a lot of morbid interests, which you might also call obsessions. Ok, a morbid interest should relate to death, and I don't really like when other people use this term casually, but I think it's fair. These obsessions start off as pure loathing and as my attention is drawn to them I just want to see more of them so that I can dislike them even more...and eventually I grow to love them.

• Jeggings. I heard this word and thought, that sounds incredibly stupid. There would be no chance of ever seeing me in faux jeans slash leggings (I'm not really sure at what point either one is pretending to be the other - though I prefer jeans that are like leggings to leggings that look like jeans). Because I found them so ridiculous, I had to try them on. And when I did I fell in love. I love jeans like no other person I know (I actually like sleeping in them) so this wasn't super surprising...basically anything jean is fine with me.
• Boston Red Sox. Ok, I'm still on the fence about how much I hate them, but right now it's kind of getting to the point where I want them to win lots so that I can watch them get this close to being World Series champions and then see them lose...but I also wouldn't super mind if they won because I feel like the devoted fans deserve it...but then there are bandwagon jumpers, so, eh. My feelings toward this franchise aren't nearly as strong as my disgust when the Yankees win, but I would still like to see someone else take the AL east - if the Orioles are out of the question, I still dream of seeing the Blue Jays having a stellar season. One day. In maybe twenty years.
• Canada. Ok, you're thinking, Marisa makes no sense. Why value the Toronto Blue Jays? Well, Canada is yet another of my morbid interests. It's so easy to make fun of but also dangerously easy to pity. It seems like a nice enough country without too many scandals or vindictive policies, and everyone knows Canadians are well-intentioned, like Hufflepuffs! But actually, it has been one of my lifelong dreams to travel to Canada. This may seem really silly - I know it's not so different from here - but I want to use Canadian money and buy Canadian coffee and eat Canadian delicacies like poutine. I am a little bit obsessed with their culture and a lot obsessed with using my passport for something.
• Justin Bieber. You may note that the Biebs is a Canadian. I started off kind of grossed out by the fact that I couldn't tell the difference between his voice and female singers and how little girls were fawning over him. So then I started to ironically listen to his music - you know, how people go to see Twilight just to make fun of it (note: I have done this). It started getting stuck in my head but I still brushed it off; catchy as he may be, I was having none of his tomfoolery. But as you all know by now, after watching the inspirational film Never Say Never, I was a converted belieber. I went home and listened to all of his songs approximately twenty times apiece. I told everyone to see this movie. I started bursting out into song (mostly Baby). I now have a JB sticker on the back of my phone. What is this madness?! I've never got caught by the fangirl crazies before in my life (I was/am immune to boy bands, Aaron Carter and Jesse McCartney). All I can say is that I caught Bieber Fever.
• Sporcle. Some people still haven't heard of this amazing procrastination machine - my advice? Stay away. But if you've already built up an interest in ruining your productivity, by all means, read on! I heard about this site during my senior year of high school, and thankfully I found it a little bit boring after doing the states quiz so it didn't pull down my grades and force the rescission of my college admission. But when I got to college, I realized that this was totally a site made for college kids. And now when I have free time and get tired of Facebook, I harmlessly meander over to Sporcle, thinking I'll teach myself something interesting. Seven and a half hours later I will know all the words to all of the Disney songs and will be able to list the most populated cities in the United States in descending order (this is a true story). Unfortunately, this knowledge will not stay with me forever, and I will continue to have the need to find more quizzes so that I can get in the 99th percentile - because to me the best part of taking these quizzes is seeing how well I do against the rest of the world (ie other bored college students). This really does qualify as a morbid interest, I think, because the more time I spend on Sporcle, the less time I have for real life. And yet...I just can't stop.