Major events that happened within two and a half weeks:

CS Faculty dinner
Finding apartment for next year after two sets of roommates bail.
3 Faculty meetings for rec letters
3 long papers (30 pages in English) and 7 short ones (14 pages in Russian)
Emergency friend move on 4 hours notice
MAJOR family emergency
Figuring out RSO's for next year
Apartment move
Graduation and goodbyes to many friends
Hard deadline for 8 hour drive to Michigan
Week long planning retreat
Brother seriously discombobulates his knee
Two more faculty meet-ups
Mother in the hospital for two days
Cars break down
Finding a new house on a week's notice
Moving out of my home of 21 years
Brother has major reconstructive knee surgery
Attempting to get to South Africa

And then I get lectured on not having my shit together.  Would you? 

Thanks to free iTunes downloads, I've found my song (and a tribute to the sometime value of CCM).

I think this is the third or fourth time in the past few weeks in which I have started typing a new post.  So let´s see if this one actually ends up posted.

I've just been saved by a benificent TA who drove to HP on the weekend from downtown to deliver em and I new dvd when ours didn't work.  i know that doesn't make sense, but take it for granted that i feel incredibly relieved.  i thought i might have had to flunk the final project. 

disjointed thoughts...!  that's all i have when i get to school, especially when finals comes around.

i don't know what's gotten into me lately.  i'm on edge, i'm stressed, and it's not because i'm drowning in work...actually, the work load is relatively light compared to just about every other finals week i've experienced here.  i have a research paper in spanish due tomorrow, a russian final on tuesday, a AIDS poster presentation on wednesday, and another research paper in spanish due friday.  and then st. patricks, for which I am hanging around chicago to see the river run green.  What a life, what a life. 

spring break is soon.  so soon, in fact, that i think i'm subconsciously already in it.  this is dangerous thinking when in fact you have sixteen pages to write, a test to take and two professors to convince before break actually starts.

i've been keeping a journal recently.  i don't know why i decided to start...i've never been a good journaler. but i carry it around with me a just write when the mood takes me.  and it's half full, already.  goodness knows, i have no idea what's filling it.  just stuff. 

i feel like i'm a never-empty fount of words.  i wrote lots of papers this quarter, which i must admit i'm pretty good at.  at one point i remember telling emily that i had nothing left to write, that i'd thought all the thoughts there were to think, that i'd written all the words there were to write. 

but then they came.  they came and they came and they still come.  are they worth anything? probably not.  but at least they're here.

i wrote applications this quarter, and my mind was boggled.  i got into everything.  no one gets into everything.  no one!  it meant that i had to decide, and goodness knows that i hate decisions.  i had alot of angsty conversations with my friends here wondering what i should do.  and they were wonderful.  i have one solid memory of these conversations other than the almost physical pain of the gears in my head cranking around.

josh said, "lauren, you are once again worrying about something good." 

so very true.

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i think it's guilt.  i don't know where this guilt comes from or why it's there, but i feel unaccountably guilty. i have so many things going on.  a ridiculous number of things going on.  or not that ridiculous...i don't know.  i waste alot of time, almost compulsively.  and i don't know how to stop.  i think maybe i should go back to living in the reg.  at least i felt more productive, even though i probably wasn't.

blah dee blah blah blah.

oh, the plans i have for the summer.  plans that i think are terribly exciting, but no one else seems to share my joy.  whenever i tell people, they look at me funny or make recommendations about how to fix it.  almost always there's a "....and why?" and that hurts, because these are things i worked for.  things i'm excited about.  i know this all sounds terribly vague and nebulous, but these are places and things i really shouldn't post publically for the entire world to see....if you want to know, send me an email.  i can tell you that next winter quarter i'll be in south africa!  pretty darn exciting, if i may say so myself.  the number of people giving me advice is truly absurd.  everyone has an opinion, and they all give it without me asking for it.  actually, that's not true.  i compulsively ask for advice.  i meet with all my professors all the time, i try to know them all.  this quarter i've met individually with each and every professor, all of them more than once.  all this advice-seeking...i don't really have many thoughts about it, other than that it gets annoying at times like this.

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Oh, my computer is officially russified and spanified.  to prove that i haven't been merely wasting my time at college, i present lauren's innane russian skills: ????? ???? ?????? ???-?? ??? ?????? ?? ???????.
and next quarter i'm taking old english. (yeah, make all the stupid nerdy homeschooler jokes you want, chicos.  i read lord of the rings proudly!). 

Now it's off to church, after a very discombobulated rant about nothing in particular.  i miss you all, and i think that's the point of all this.  i miss you, and i want you to hear what's going on in life.  and i want to share what's going on in life.  so.  feel the love.