Welcome New Readers!

As if facebook.com (a college networking site; think a more sophisicated myspace) didn't provide enough connectivity, now my blog will be published on my facebook profile! Those not in college or high school will continue to have to read my blog here, but those on facebook will be able to read all about me in one place! Exciting, isn't it?

Summer Addendum/First Week Back/One Year Blogaversary

There's one thing I forgot to add to my post about the summer that I must add at the request of my mother. When we were shopping in Bozeman, my sister and my mom saw some guy shaking hands with some other guy saying "Nice to meet you!" or something like that. They both thought that was kinda weird, but then the guy turned around and said "I just met the Fonz!" Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my mother and sister met the man who met the Fonz, aka Henry Winkler. My sister tried to get a picture of him, and ended up getting the back of his head.
Oh well.
I've had "one week" here at KU. Classes started on Thursday, and I've had four out of five of my classes. I had just Math 111 (probability and statistics) on Thursday, and Russian 212 (a continuation of last year), Geology 101 (yup, that's what it is), and Psychology 104 (yup, that's what that is, too). So far, so good. I have Journalism 301, a continuation of my hopefully increasing number of journalism courses. Since that is my major and everything.

And now for a big annoucement...MY BLOG IS ONE YEAR OLD!
Yes, one year ago today, I started "Life as a Jayhawk" to keep my homies apprised of any breaking details. Let's have a look back, shall we?
On Friday, August 19th, 2005, I wrote:
"Two days of classes done. Russian looks fun...except for the annoying TA. She doesn't really know what she's doing...she just kinda wings it it seems like. She goes way to fast when teaching us pronouncation, but we catch up. J-101 seems fun; the prof is a goofball. Yay! Speech looks okay...it's a grad student so he's pretty laid back so far. English looks just like A.P. English except with a lot fewer papers.
Hallelujah.
How are things on the social end? Non-existant. I haven't really done anything with anybody yet. I'm hoping the Navs thing on Sunday will solve that.
That's all for now."
Ah, to be a freshman. No wait. That's not nostalgic. I didn't like KU for a while. Nevermind.
Anyways, Happy Birthday Blog!

Summer Summary

Catchy, isn't it? Well, it has been a great summer. I got to make a lot of money at 3M (wheee) and have fun times with my friends and family.
Last week my family and I were in Montana on our family vacation. (The pictures are up on my photobucket account, you can find the link on the right side of your screen.) It was basically like Colorado, except not. That's really the only way I can explain it, unfortunately. We rented a cabin halfway between Bozeman and Big Sky in the Gallatin National Forest. It was great fun. We did some hiking, some whitewater rafting (Megan fell out once...oops!), some shopping, and even some horseback riding. I took probably around 200 pictures there, so I was pretty busy with that. While we were there, I read the combined effort of Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, House, in less than 9 hours. Yes, it's that good.
After we got back on Saturday, it was super-fast-packing-time for me, since I left two days later. I packed for a while that night, went to Kayla's house for awhile, and packed some more. On Sunday, my youth group went to ValleyFair, an amusement park in Shakopee, Minnesota. It was loads of fun, except for the whole getting really wet on water rides thing. That, not so much.
And most importantly, behind getting to spend a whole day with Kayla (YAY!), we recieved a new motto in life: "Don't Poke The Bear."
Explanation: We rode one of the old wooden rollercoasters there called "Excalibur." It was kind of out of the way, in the back of the park, so not many people were there. The operator who has to give that mundane safety talk (arms and legs inside at all times, etc.) decided to be a little more wacky with his speech. This is a quote from Kayla's facebook profile:
"Will the next victims please step forward, fasten your seatbelts and pull down your lap bar. If you don't have a lap bar, that's to bad. Just hang on tight. There will be absolutely no laughing, screaming or having fun on this ride. If you do, you might wake the bear. If you do wake the bear, we ask that you do not feed the bear, do not poke the bear, and do not look directly at the bear. If the bear begins to charge, we suggest that you stop, drop, and roll."
Yeah. Don't Poke The Bear!!!

Filler

That's all this is. After a great end of the summer and a great week in Montana with my folks, I'm finally back (yay?) in Lawrence for my Sophomore year here at KU. Tomorrow I'll be regaling you all with vacation stories, explaining why we all should not poke the bear, and what I left behind in Hutch.
Tune in tomorrow!

The Summer Is Slowing

...as well as not getting any cooler. It's been in the 90s here for the past week or so. Yuck.
Well, sorry I haven't written on here at all this month. There really hasn't been anything that exciting going on around here.
I lead the youth group on Wednesday for the first time! I'm gonna talk about college life (and hopefully not scare them too much, ;) ). Should be exciting!
I recieved my first mp3 player today! I know, I'm a little behind the curve. I didn't get one of those fancy-schmancy iPods, though. I just bought a Creative MuVo TX FM.
Translation?
It's an mp3 player that has a radio, and can plug directly into the USB port on the computer. It's basically a jumpdrive with buttons and a screen. I'm listening to it now, and I am quite impressed. I bought the 512mb model, and I fit around 150 songs on it. I don't need an iPod that carries around all my music. I can delete and move stuff around pretty easily.
Not much else is going on around here, but my dear mother wanted a new post.

Photo #15

Two Generations of Our Defenders

Superman and Journalism, all in one great movie!

Who could ask for anything more?
I just saw the new "Superman Returns" movie last night. I was going because I had heard many good things about it, and because Kayla was back from vacation (so the movie was infinitely better in that respect as well).
Ah where do I begin? The cast. Every person in this film is perfect. Clark/Superman (played by Iowa native Brandon Routh) handles the goofiness of Clark and the superb confidence of Superman extremely well, so much so that Lois Lane and her beau (Lois played by Kate Bosworth and Richard White, her financee by James Marsden) laugh as Richard notices some slight similarites between Clark Kent and Superman.
Despite being the main characters, they were all outdone by Kevin Spacey as the evil (and quite humorous) Lex Luthor. In the original 1978 Superman film, Luthor was played by Gene Hackman, and Spacey brought back the goofiness/creepyness of the original. Long close-up shots are very well-done, showing the emotions of all the actors at various stages of their emotional roller-coasters in the film.
The CGI effects are incredible, and probably why this film took around 200 million dollars to make. I do believe that is the most expensive movie to date...ever. There was only one shot in the entire 2 1/2 hour movie that I thought looked a little fake. Everything else, the waves, the water, the flying effects of Superman himself, various earthquakes, explosions, everything looked legit and photo-realistic.
The story was also quite imaginative. They didn't quite take the same route as the folks did with Batman Begins, with all the darkness and real-world grit, but they did add some very human (pun intended) qualities to Superman and Metropolis. There were several twists that totally threw me off the loop, as it did for many. There is one major twist, which I will not mention, that no one saw coming. You'll just have to go see it!
And of course, the wonderful Daily Planet. I can only hope I can get a job interviewing Superman once I become a journalist.
That was a joke. Hahahaha! Nevermind.

Photo #14

The famous "Spoonbridge" in the Twin Cities.

Wait-I have a BLOG? Oh yeah!

Yeah, I remember this old thing! It's been awhile. And sadly, nothing has really happened that is of note.
I've been doing a steady 40 hours a week at 3M. I've made around 1000 so far, so the money's quite good! I get a four-day weekend because of the 4th, so I guess that's exciting.
I really don't have anything to talk about. Nothing exciting in the news (to me). Well, this was just (another) post to let you all know that I'm still alive.

Oooooops......

Another week come and gone. Work is getting tougher, but that's how things go. I did training stuff all last week, and this week i started on the machine. I won't describe what I do. It's too boring and technical. It all really depends on who is gone what day. Some days I'll be running the sheeter, some days packing, etc. That's really all that's been going on here...just wanted to update to let you all know i wasn't dead.