okay...i think it's fixed. if you were one of the unlucky ones to witness the awful shmutz that was making up this page for the past few days, i apologize.

today i have to:
~go to walmart and get the stuff on my last minute things list
~do laundry
~(egads!) start packing

tomorrow is my parents' 28th wedding anniversary. i have the world's best parents. they are amazing, and still so in love after 28 years...everybody needs that. happy anniversary, mom and dad :)

trying to fix this...just excuse everything for now...the color, the spacing...ugh. i'm too anal. i can't leave it like this while i'm gone...

btw...why does my blog look like crappola in my mozilla browser (and, i'm assuming, netscape)? if you know why, please tell me. it's bugging me.

hope everyone had a very merry christmas...mine was absolutely wonderful. i know i've been awful about updating lately, but...well, i'm going to be even more awful in the next few weeks b/c i leave for patagonia in 6 DAYS!!! holy moly. i am so, so excited about going...but i am so, so sad about being so far away from mike for three weeks. opportunities to call will be few and far between, so...*sigh*. but i will be in a new and exciting place and learning a lot. i got lots of great trip related stuff for christmas, too (like my super-fun headlamp, thanks erika...). no plans as of yet for new years, but i'm sure we'll think of something. have a great new year's everyone!

got my PCB paper back today...got an A-!! kick ass. i worked so hard on that paper, so that's really great. also, finished my last exam this morning. whoo hoo!

short on time, but check this out: i have discovered the absolute coolest show *ever*. you need to watch it if you haven't yet...it's on the discovery channel and it's called monster garage. the other day, they turned a geo tracker into a hot air balloon (so, trackers are good for something after all...). what can i say? i'm a jeep girl...

okay...so i just finished my remote sensing exam in an obscenely short amount of time (1/2 hour). and i think i did really well, somehow. we were allowed to bring in a "cheat sheet" to the exam, and by some divine intervention i apparently put all the right things on mine--most of the exam consisted of me looking at my sheet and just transferring the answers over. there were a lot of questions about the different characteristics of certain types of sensors (Landsat, Quickbird, SPOT, etc...), and i pretty much just copied all of that info straight from the lecture slides and onto my sheet. so now i'm just waiting for lisa to finish up, b/c i picked her up today (roads were a little icky in her neck of the woods). whew--only one more exam to go.

tomorrow we're "doing lunch" with todd and catie and the 2 itty bitty bergers (well, not so itty bitty...but they're babies. and relative to todd, almost everything is little). we're doing that right after my 8 am (blech) dr.'s appointment in trumbull. yikes. guess who's going to be up bright and early tomorrow...

just a little over 2 weeks until i leave for patagonia...we're flying Hartford-->Atlanta-->Santiago-->Punta Arenas (look waaay at the bottom). so far away...wow. i'm getting so excited...i got a list from lisa of what to pack (since she went last year), and i'm going to start figuring out how my tent/sleeping bag/etc are going to be packed. b/c i can. b/c i want to. b/c i'm *excited*.

ok, time to be producitve--going to print out my semester project for my modeling class (that looks so bizarre--modeling class. i feel like i should elaborate...eh, you've been paying attention all along, right?). adios...

**yay** i got my plane tickets for patagonia today!! delta and lanchile, respectively. i'm so excited...

lisa and i made personalized christmas cookies for some of the nrme professors the other night. we gave them out yesterday, and they loved them! we decorated them relative to whatever the professor's specialty is (remote sensing, wetlands, etc). it was really cute to see all of their expressions when they saw the cookies. it made me want to make cookies for everyone i know :)

today, lisa and i set up every computer in the leris lab so that it would have a picture of david hasselhoff as its wallpaper. hee hee. we also set all of the web browser home pages to davidhasselhoff.com. buahahahahaha! because you can never have enough david hasselhoff (check out my regular webpage for a hilarious david hasselhoff related link...i'm to lazy to go fine the URL and make a link for it here...).

supposed to get an ice storm tonight, and i'm pretty bummed b/c we weren't able to get a christmas tree last night and i'd really, really like to be able to get one tonight. oh well. tomorrow, we're driving down to take my dad christmas shopping and have dinner at mike's parents' house for his birthday (which is friday), so we were thinking about going to a tree farm mike used to work at down in that area and getting a tree there. the place we went last year had very thin, gappy trees this year :/. i know there was a drought this year and all, but i want a big fat beautiful tree. and i'm going to be picky about it, too. so there.

alright, enough time wasting...going to be productive now...

putzing around, waiting until i can meet with my advisor...
not much on the plate today; probably ought to do some studying for my modeling exam tomorrow. planning on doing some laundry tonight, and maybe making cookies (yay!) with lisa. because she should be studying for modeling, too :). maybe we'll study *while* we bake...make cookies in the shape of stocks, flows, and converters; maybe some sinusoidal ones, too...or not.

i finally finished my paper! yippee!

i am having a very, very bad morning.

1) mike got me a beautiful sweater as a hanukkah gift. i put it on this morning when i got dressed, then went into the bathroom, where i proceeded to spill liquid makeup all over the floor, rug, wall, my shoes, my pants, and MY SWEATER.
2) on the way to school after cleaning up (got the sweater pretty clean, still wore it), i realize that i'm out on windshield washer fluid. as i drive, my windshield gets more and more caked with sand and salt from the roads. i stop at a gas station to buy more, but they are out. i throw snow on my windshield and keep driving.
3) the second gas station i stop at has fluid, but i have no cash and there's a 5 dollar credit card limit. there is no limit for debit cards, so i tell the cashier to do it as debit. stupid cashier man insists that it is "either a credit card or a debit card, but it can't be both." he is apparently confused by the mastercard logo. "it's a debit card, too" i say. he looks confused. i stare at him. "yes. just do it." he does. it works. i leave.
4) i pull out of the gas station only to realize that the direction that i want to go through the intersection is closed. i cannot go straight. no one will let me move over from the straight lane. i sit through 3 light changes before someone lets me go.
5) i get to school, where my one class is a lecture devoted to cancer, which my grandfather is in the midst of dying of.
6) after class, i go to my department head to see if i can get out of a class for my secondary major. he says fine, just check w/ my animal science advisor. i go. he sends me to the professor of said course. i go. professor of said course is a snippy, bitter little asshole, who says his seminar is different from the natural resources seminar that i'm taking, and i have to take both. the difference? his seminar teaches how to write a resume (which i already know how to do) and brings in people to talk about job opportunities in the animal science field (which i have no desire or intention of ever working in). he says many rude and presumptuous things that will take too long for me to type. my eyelid is currently beginning to twitch just thinking about it.
7) after meeting with the snippy, bitter little asshole, i look down to realize that there is a hole in the sleeve of my brand new sweater.
8) as i was typing the above sentence, some guy came into the computer lab and informed me that he had a project saved on the computer that i was working on. there is a universal drive in this lab that can be accessed on all of the computers. did he save his project on that drive? of course not. i moved to a new computer and had to wait for it to start up so i could finish ranting and raving.
9) i now have to go to work, where i was supposed to have had my schedule for next semester straightened out with the other 2 girls that are in school currently by 1 pm today. it is 1:06. i will not be at work until 2. my schedule still is not settled b/c of the snippy, bitter little asshole. i am probably going to get chewed out by my boss and given even less hours to work next semester than i already have, which could only be described as paltry at best.
10) i want to go home and curl up into a ball and sleep all weekend, and i can't b/c i have to write a paper on the effects of pcb's and breast cancer, which i haven't had time to start yet b/c i've been working on my modeling project which still is not working.

garrrr. >:(

got the lilo and stitch dvd last night...i love this movie. i've always enjoyed disney movies as much as the next person, but i am borderline rabid about this one. i don't really know why...stitch is just so darn cute! i was complaining during the previews about how disney always makes crappy straght-to-video sequels of their movies...next thing that comes onto the screen? a straight-to-video movie all about stitch. and i'm so going to buy it. i'm such a hypocrite :D

it took me an hour to get to my internship in hampton this morning because, despite the fact that this is new england, people do not know what to do with themselves when there is a millimeter of snow on the ground. but i anticipated that, and left a little earlier than normal, so i still got there only a few minutes late. problem? no one was there. the doors were locked. i couldn't get in. bah! so i had to turn around and go back home, which makes my gas-guzzling behemoth of a car rather cranky.

on a brighter note, i convinced myself that since i'd been so put out, i earned the right to skip my one and only class at 2:00, and i went *christmas shopping*! whee! b/c we all know how much i hate christmas. riiiiight...

on a weirder note, i saw someone that i haven't seen in years today...an old friend that i'd known since 1st grade but lost track of completely a few years ago. walked right by him in the hallway of my apartment building...i guess he lives in one of the other mills now. pretty neat.

**Lilo and Stitch comes out today**! when mike gets home, we're going to the mall to pick up our pre-ordered copy. i can't wait to watch it again. don't laugh at me, it was a really good movie. shut up, it was. *and*, i'm making hamburgers for dinner. yum yum yummers.

well, i don't know about everybody else, but i ate waaay too much food on thanksgiving...but that's what it's all about, right?

went down to mike's aunt and uncle's for hanukkah on saturday...i got hanukkah gifts! that was pretty unexpected. i got some socks, earrings, a little stuffed stitch (as in lilo and) christmas tree ornament, a set of lilo and stitch figurines (so cute!), and *gasp* a barrel of monkeys. and some other stuff...

todd and catie welcomed baby number two--ryan michael berger--into the world on saturday morning. we went down to see them before stopping at the party. very very cute baby--and huge! 10 lbs 3 oz! 15 inch head! yikes. i'm in no hurry whatsoever.

tracy called me last night and announced that she and her boyfriend got engaged! the wedding isn't until may of 2004, but...wow. how exciting. i love going to weddings :)

looking forward to tonight; tanya, cece, kim, and possibly a few other people that i work/used to work with are having a girls night, going out to eat and catch up and all that good stuff. but first, i have lots and lots of schoolwork to do. blech.