let's make haste, reduce that waste, and have water with a better taste

I told my friend that when I have an abundance of work, I tend to wander. So after wandering to her neck of the woods for awhile, I decided to come back and post to my blog like I said I was.

J-term is coming to a close. I have one final tomorrow and one on Wednesday, and I'll be done. After a few mishaps in the class, I still stand by what I said in the previous blog about enjoying it. Thursday, I got to tour the water sanitation plant, and today I presented a plan for installing a butterfly garden and an apple orchard on campus.

The environment is serious stuff, dudes. Just last night Obama ordered the Transportation Department to begin drawing up rules for more economically friendly cars. Apparently revamped vehicles are supposed to be ready to be sold by 2011. The American car industry is failing, but Obama wants it to be the lead sellers in fuel-efficient cars. Also, he's enforcing the law that requires a 40% improvement in gas mileage in cars and trucks by 2020. Supposedly Bush didn't do anything to enforce the law, but Obama is laying the smack down.

If everyone in the world lived like we do in America, all of our world's resources would be used up in weeks. We watched this video about the rise of the middle class in India. They are starting to have a consumerism society like we are, and a few Americans in the film expressed concerns that there is not enough resources for them to do this. The Indians were retaliating by saying that if America, the country that other developing countries are looking up to, can live this way, then why is it wrong for other people to do the same? Is America capable of humbling itself to let everyone else live like us or better? I would hope so, but I don't think so, unless some large changes are made and new laws are enforced.

Throwing out random statistics to make you feel terrible about America is not my agenda, but this one...well, decide for yourself:
Americans spend $42 billion each year to lost weight. The world needs $24 billion each year to eliminate poverty.

to watch his woods fill up with snow.

Today is pretty significant in the weather area, so I guess that is means for an update. Also, it's J-term and I have an amazing amount of free time on my hands.

I'm taking Enviornment and Society as my j-term class. I have to take it for a gen ed. credit, but I have come to find out that the classes that don't have anything to do with my major are some of the most beneficial courses I have taken during college (beneficial personally, not necessarily for my major). Someone in class called someone during a break today, and they had the worst attitude about the class. They had a very high-school mentality, which I'm sure they'll grow out of. I'm pretty sure I had that my first semiester on campus. Now I'm thankful for the classes I have to take, gen ed. or not.

So in other news, it's snowing a lot. Around a foot so far, I'd guess. I had to scrape off about 2+ inches off my car this morning, and then do it all over again with about 4+ inches that had accumulated on it since the first time. I'm hearing a lot of people complain, but I like it. I think it's beautiful. I wish there was a place where we could go sledding, but here in the flatlands of Indiana, those are hard to come by. If this keeps up, maybe classes will be cancelled. And no one can hate the snow for that, eh?

A little music critique and update. First of all, hello free download of the week last week. A Bach concerto! Kudos to iTunes for having more culture than I thought. Alas, they lose points for the really horrible music video, Sweet About Me by Gabriella Cilmi.
I got an iTunes giftcard for chrismtas along with the rest of the world, and I'm still debating what to buy with it. I kind of want to use it for individual songs rather than albums so I can expand my artists, but even that is still debatable I've only bought one song so far and that was On the Night My Love Broke Through by Cold War Kids. I like them, and have one of their albums. Their song/lyric inconsistancy stops me from buying their newest album, so I just gave all the songs a 30 second listen and picked my favorite. It was worth it.

father Time

As soon as the ball dropped, confetti flew all over my house, fake champaigne glasses with sparkling grape juice clinked together, and my aunt said, "The year 2008 is no more!"
That struck me differently. No one has really said that before. It's all about welcoming Baby New Year in a celebration. This year I realized that Father Time just died at the stroke of midnight, and I got heavy boots for reasons I can't put a finger on. A lot of stuff happened in 2008. I feel as if I should list that.

2008

• Started off by going to Greece and Italy for J-term
• turned 20
• my dad lost his job in April
• my uncle died in his 50's of a heart attack
• I worked as a bank teller for the summer
• dad got a new job
• went to Disney world
• started my junior year of college
• got published (outside the school newspaper) for the first time, multiple times
• went to macy's thanksgiving day parade in NYC

I'm not going to make goals for 2009. I don't do the whole New Year's resolutions. Although, I am stuck in the tradition of eating black-eyed peas, rice, ham, and spinach on New Years day.

Every year my house hosts the New Years Eve party for the high school and college groups from my church. We normally have around 50 people in our house coming and going. This year we decided not to do it, and had close friends and family over. We played a lot of games, shot off fireworks then played on the wii until the wii hours of the morning. heh. Who knows what 2009 will bring. I have no expectations at all, and I'm starting to wonder if I should. And now I'm going to leave a little excerpt from the song New Years Eve by Five Iron Frenzy.

It's New Years Eve and I feel my insecurities, are haunting me like ghosts, this sinking quicksand. And then with thunderous praise and lofty adoration, a second passes by, yet nothing changes. I hate my skin, this grave I'm standing in. Another change of years, and I wish I wasn't here. A year goes by and I'm staring at my watch again, and I dig deep this time, for something greater than I've ever been, life to ancient wineskins. And I was blind but now I see.