Road Trip

I am on a road trip. I will return to blogging when I get back.

Tristen and Kaylor

There is a little bit of back story needed here. These are two of my closest friends, I love them and can sing nothing but their praises, and some Disney songs. Both have finished their degrees and are moving away from Ottawa this weekend. It is so hard to see them go as they are a big part of my life here, lump in my throat. I met Kristen in the first week of first year (well, her first year.) Through Kristen I met Taylor, who I became friends with in second year. What should also be noted is that a lot of the memories I have of them from the last year or so are also tied to Heather, who thankfully is staying around for at least the summer.

In rough chronological order, I will always remember...

-meeting Kristen in first year French where I terrified her and forced her to be my friend

-never learning that 'Je suis une chat' means 'I am a cat'

-going as a guest to the cafeteria

-getting kicked off their residence floor for having alcohol in the hallway

-discovering The Lonely Island

-cooking Kristen perogies at Glen

-studying for Human Rights with Kristen and Taylor from a page of predetermined questions

-the Gentleman way

-hanging out in Taylor's big room on the first floor of 998

-Socrates and Jesus

-meeting M- during a random make-out at the bar

-Taylor's issues with pee and Kristen's issues with first dates

-the Numa Numa dance

-Kristen milking her birthday for weeks on end and me milking a break up to go to Pizza Hut

-Kings

-being quoted in a number of articles both for The Charleton and journalism classes

-having Kristen stay with me at Le Manoir off and on throughout the summer she was Productions Editor

-Kristen always convincing me that we should just walk downtown

-Taylor as a raptor

-nights sleeping on the futon

-Jeopardy

-being told that a box of chicken fingers and a bag of baby carrots does not count as a dinner

-visiting Kristen at work both at the Charleton and Smithbooks

-Kristen crashing on my futon after watching Amanda Bynes

-fierce Wednesdays with the girls along with dinner and great desserts

-painting Die Höhle

-going camping and having Taylor cook incredible meals over a fire

-being 110% sure

-the alcove becoming the cubical

-creating strange sound effects for rummy, the birth of a cow, and what a raccoon says, 'heeeey'

-babysitting Friends DVD's for over a year

-offering to help paint Taylor's new house but just ending up drinking for the whole weekend

-downey paper, the plastic lattice, and fear of sleeping with Kristen

-Taylor's short bangs

-being purposed to by Adam, as Eve, at The Big Apple

-issues with Acers

-going to see a show about sex put on by children

-photoshoots

-playing rummy, learning honeymoon bridge, and teaching two handed euchre

-Kristen's strange eyelash

-falling in love with Taylor's bed and sleeping in it whenever she wasn't there

-picking Taylor up from the airport

-all nighters in the library, frantically trying to print, rushing around campus, only to find out that St. Pats was locked

-Mark's Easter egg hunt

-Guuuuuy La Douche

-winning at the Wii because I was the only one who was sober

-Mark getting ready to lunge and me screaming while Kristen did nothing

-sleeping with Kristen when I was scared of the monsters

-Taylor leaving her mark on Ottawa and the walk home along the canal

.... and so many more that it is impossible to list them all. While new memories are sure to be made I will miss having Taylor and Kristen living just around the corner. I love them both so much!

Or So I Thought

Breathing stops, at the mention of a name

I look away

I thought it all had left, as quickly as it came

-

I had thought our eyes were meeting

I still dream

Moments that seemed so very fleeting

-

Needing a challenge, I aimed so high

I felt hope

But looked as though, I was going to cry

-

Awkward and small, I stared at the ground

I don't regret

It took quite a while, but courage I found

-

Said it was alright, when nothing happened

I was lying

A reference is made and my heart quickened

-

Broke so long ago but the pain is still there

It is time

Wishing for something to come and repair

-

I thought I was over him

I thought I was over you

I thought it was good

I thought it was gone

-

But my breathing stops

At the mention of a name

--Christine Sweeton

Final Project

It has been a long time since I could say that I was working on a final project. My courses pretty much always have final essays, so I just call them that. However, for my British Literature II class, because I have already written 3 essays, I had the option of doing a fun assignment. The assignment was to write a series of letters between two of the characters in The Portrait of a Lady. I think I am the only person in the class who chose it so when I talked to the T.A. we decided together how to do the assignment. We agreed on 8 letters that had to show the progression of the characters that occurs in the novel. I went a little overboard. It ended up being 31 letters, plus a letter to the T.A. at the top of the pile. The letter for the T.A. explains the thesis I am trying to prove in the letters and tells him that I identified the 8 most important letters with a special symbol both on their envelopes and the letters themselves. Jerrica helped me put the pretty addresses and return addresses on all the envelopes and the entire project ended up taking me two all-nighters to finish. I think the final product is super adorable!

X & Y

The past few weeks I find that I have been repeating a similar statement to my friends. I keep saying; To Z, 'Have a great time X, I will see you when I get back from Y.' At the end of this week I am going with Teri and her friend out west. We are spending the first few days driving out, Road Trip! On the way, I get to stop into Edmonton to visit Erin, Anne, and hopefully Little Brother Mike. Teri's friend lives in Vancouver so Teri and I will be staying with her and touring the city for a little over a week. We are planning on spending a bit of time in Victoria as well before we fly back to Ontario on May 10th. In the above statement I am obviously referring to this trip, but I word it a number of different ways. Y = 'Vancouver', 'Out West', 'B.C.', 'My Vacation', 'My Road Trip.' While Y is fairly random, logistically in this statement, X is dependant on Z. Obviously the location (X) I'm wishing my friend (Z) to have a great time time in is directly connected to which friend I'm talking to and where they are going. So the remaining variables for this statement are:
If Z = 'Heather', Therefore X = 'In Pittsburgh', 'With S'
If Z = 'Anna', Therefore X = 'In Mexico'
If Z = 'Taylor', Therefore X = 'In Europe', 'On Your Trip'
If Z = 'Kristen', Therefore X = 'In Europe', 'On Your Trip'
What this has made me realise is that my friends and I travel alot. It confirms that I'm really excited about my trip and have been probably talking about it with alot of my friends. This also shows that helping Taylor study for statistics last night has really made me look at the world from a more mathematics standpoint and that I'm totally lame.

Seriously - No Time

My schedule is jam packed over the next week and a half. Leading up to my trip out west I work every weekday except the Wednesday of my exam. Leading up to my exam I'm meeting with my study group everyday. I'm trying to see a bunch of my friends before I go since I really haven't seen many of them this crazy exam month and I want to visit before I leave the province for two weeks. I'm really not good at balancing school, work, and social at the best of times but now everything has been cranked up a notch. I really need to see my friends, especially those who won't be in Ottawa when I get back in May. Also, work projects are really big right now and since I have been screwing up at my job so much I really need to step it up. Of course school is first priority and exam time even more so. I don't feel overwhelmed or stressed, just busy. Really busy!

Media Photography - Final

For all those that modelled for me during my Media Photography course this semester, and to everyone who followed my progress through Always Standing, thank you! I have received my final mark and I got a A- which I am pleased with.

Trip Home

I went home for Easter and one of the things I did while I was there was to sort through my old memory boxes. It was really fun to go through my old keepsakes, toys, and school work. In honour of that I thought I would post a really bad poem. This is the first poem I ever wrote, well ever officially wrote down. I composed it completely myself, randomly just for the fun of it. (In later years my mom would often work with me, come up with rhymes, and write some of the lines.) It has won a couple of competitions and been published in an anthology at one point. I was pretty young when I wrote it, I know that I entered it in a contest in 1996 when I was 11 and it was probably written a year or more before that. It is not very good.

I've Got The Keys
I've got the keys
Mom gave me responsibility.
I could climb the statue of liberty.
I'm walking home,
All alone.
I have to open the door,
But I want to do so much more .
The whole key chain?
Is my mother insane?
Got the keys to the office, pool, and van.
Man Oh Man!
I got the keys to the car.
I could go really far.
The chain says "#1 Mom,"
But boy this time she was dumb!
I opened the door.
Didn't do more.
Oh well! Responsibility.

-Christine Sweeton