Great Summer Break

So I pretty muchly was a lazy bum during the summer. If my blog were a plant it would be very, very dead at the moment. Still summer break was good. A real quick summary……

-Hung out
-Fun getting experience at St. Francis (Seriously catheters and balloon pumps are incredible)
-The ever present book-reading, a sad but strong addiction.
-And randomness

So I’m actually not sure if I’m going to keep this blog up this coming school year or not. I’ve actually got a few ideas that I might start a new, less me-oriented blog with. It’s simmering in the cooking pot right now. Along with Statistics, Organic Chemistry, Microbiology, Biology 132, Two different labs, and who knows what else. Having an overfull course load is, by the way, my top excuse not to update this blog regularly at least until winter quarter. Who knows, maybe by then I’ll get back into it?
I did however discover a VERY large incentive to keep blogging. Or rather my friend Deb. Mrs. Deb?

Agh! Late teenagency is an awkward time to figure out what titles to call people by. You’re just old enough to possibly get by without adding the title but just young enough to get frowned out by some if you do. Of course when you DO use the title you can often get frowned at for making them feel older than they want to be percieved. It’s a paradox that I will have to deal with for the next few years….

Anyway back to topic. Deb/Mrs. Deb told me about this site . Apparantly you agree to write a simple review on a book and your opinions after reading it and what do these fantastic people do? They send you a free copy of the book before you review it. I now have a copy of Green by Ted Dekker on the way to my home. Once it arrives I’ll read, review, and reorder another book. There’s seems to be a fairly good selection of Christian-themed books that range from fiction to Bibles to devotionals. For a book pack-rat like me this is enough to get me hopping up and down and ridiculously excited. Trust me it’s a very sad site when I’m placed around cheap/used books.  So that’ll probably be my next post unless I figure out something to do about a new blog.

-JD

Nothing Bars The Pathway To Freedom…. Except A Whiteboard

Here are the only things that stand between me and summer….in whiteboard form of course!

Don’t let Thursday fool you. It has the thing I’m worried the most about =P

-JD

Facebook Up To More Tricks?

Discovering pirate language was nearly enough to make me forgive facebook for the loss of my livefeed (Grrr!) but I just read about another easter egg hidden in the site. Performing the Konami Code triggers a visual trick which is pretty cool. Try it! It happens every time you type, click, or hit enter!

THEY SCARE ME!

THEY FRIGHTEN ME BADLY!
-JD

MindMaps

Alright I have to admit I never liked the mind map things teachers always made you do for preparing to write a paper and such. I’m more of a start writing and go with it guy. Mind maps slowed me down and were annoying since you always had to erase and shuffle the little circles growing out of them. However I was wasting time relaxing by playing with my new favorite toy StumbleUpon, I’ll do a post about it sometime, and found text2mindmap.com. It’s actually kind of fun and with two papers due and test this week I figured I’d try it. I humbly admit that the blasted thing is actually helpful. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still against the old fashioned pencil/paper kind that take forever to organize and look really bad (For me at least) but I like the quickness of the computer style one. It’s simple, easy, and all I have to do is enter words. I really like how you can move the branches organically (They bounce!) Here’s my first try at it just trying to get something together so I don’t feel quite so lazy. (I’m fairly certain I made up a few words, but it’s for personal usage anyway so stow it English police!)
-Edit- Again WordPress likes to fiddle with my picture sizes so the text is unreadable, oh well!

Facebook = Even Cooler

Facebook has reached a new level of awesomeness that even makes up for the annoying layout changes! I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves =)

There’s even more but I didn’t want to be a jerk and post my friends stuff on here.
Here are the official instructions that are also people’s status’s as it spreads. I think I was the first to infect LA Tech with it =) Thanks go to Cody for tipping me off to it!

1) Scroll to the bottom of your Facebook page…
2) On the bottom left corner, click English: US…
3) When the language selection appears, click English: Pirate…
4) Laugh yer scurvey booty off.

-JD

Nice While It Lasted

About a month ago a friend and I managed to sneak our names into the cement some guys were putting down in the middle of the road where a sign had been.

Not sure if you can tell but my initials are by the bottom. I found out that it’s a little difficult taking a picture in the middle of a busy road….go figure. Of course those initials are now beneath an inch or two of asphalt since some genius decided that the BEST time to redo Tech Drive, a really busy road at our college, would be DURING the school year. Summer when no one is there would make too much sense I guess? I wasn’t really worried about it since I walk everywhere….

that is until I came back from class and found the direct route to my dorm blocked by wet, hot, and very fresh asphalt with the truck still crawling forward right across from Cottingham. Summer is only a month away people! The road wasn’t that bad! But now it’s finished and looks pretty good. Our crosswalk currently has blindingly white stripe right over where my initials were =(
-edit- At least they put some cement by the art building now. My initials have migrated even though this cement was harder to draw in.

-JD

Giving Blood 3.0

I had a 50/50 shot of the blood donation going great or horrible based on my last two experiences. Luckily there was no blood pooling under my skin this time =) Although I still got an extra large t-shirt instead of a small. That makes three. I must be cursed.

I also found out that it is NOT a good idea to try and work out after giving blood. I waited a few hours but I still barely ran a mile before deciding to stop so they wouldn’t have to scape me off the treadmill. I didn’t get dizzy or anything just extremely tired. I didn’t think it was possible to almost fall asleep while running. Evidently I was VERY wrong. =P

-JD

I Am Now Officially Old….

18. That’s nearly ancient, right? On April 10th I reluctantly became a year older. So what can I do now that was forbidden before?

(It’s in a picture because WordPress is occasionally uncool and messed up the formatting to where it had been reduce to weird gobbledygook)

These are just a few off the top of my head. I guess I can live with being old though. Anybody have some dentures I can borrow? I’ll give them back once I finish. Promise!

Here are a few B-Day pics. The cake was fantastic! Strawberry-Kiwi Shortcake by Mom…..so good! The last pic is technically Easter, but aye they’re close enough. Notice that my older brother is straining upwards a bit….and on a rock…….and barely as tall as me……just saying.

A really great friend from Crossett dropped by too and we went a bit muffin-crazy….(Picture by Mom, then attacked in PicniK by Emily)

Then on Sunday afternoon I get an accidental text from my friend “We’re going out with Emily and Jon tonight for his birthday” I knew nothing about it. It was supposed to be a surprise. Once I figured that part out I couldn’t stop laughing. We still had a great time and even managed to teach them how to play Rook which is a family favorite. I won’t say who won…..it’s the fun of playing……that’s what counts….not who wins…….yeah……even if you just barely lose by 25 points…..it’s all about playing…..and having an awesome partner…..which I did….that’s what matters………not winning…..

All in all it was a fantastic birthday….even if I am now old. Does this mean I get a motor wheelchair now? Can I supe it up to go 90? You laugh but more than once I’ve seen some old people chugging along at five mph ON THE ROAD. Not little backroads either but busy main roads. I laughed, other people got a bit angry I think. I almost can’t wait to get old. When old people do strange things people think it’s because they’re senile (Future post to come about an encounter with an insane old lady). Hehe I could get away with ANYTHING!

-JD

My Facebook Trends

Are you sensing a trend?