Joy

Today is a good day. 

I'm all warm and toasty, just having finished a small hazelnut cafe latte. My compliments to the cute barista who drew a leaf on the top of it. Is it drawing? Sculpting? I'm not sure what the correct terminology is. 
This is not my photo, but it's the kind of thing he did. And it tasted great, so win win. 


I had a 7:50 Sociology class, as I do every Tuesday/Thursday and today people presented about their family structure and things like that. I was reminded of just how blessed I am to be apart of my family. I love them! This is the 4 of us at Kayla's wedding (in case you couldn't tell- isn't she beautiful?) Ben, Kayla's husband, is apart of our family too.


I have a cold (right before finals- cool, immune system) so last night I took some night time cold medicine. I ZONKED OUT an hour and a half after taking them. It was rather impressive. I still feel rather wonky but it's reasonable. 
I feel much better! 

I received a flyer in my mailbox for all the Christmas events happening on campus. One of them is Christmas stories read by the president of the university. How much do I love this place?! I love that we have a nativity scene in the student center. I love that every lobby of residence halls has a decorated Christmas tree. I love that I get to celebrate without pretending it's all about Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus. Everyone here gets excited about gingerbread houses and snowball fights, but we all know the greater reason for the season. It's wonderful. This is the tree in my lobby. Lovely! 


I also received in my mailbox a Christmas greeting from a family from my home church. It was a wonderful surprise and very considerate of them to think of me. Plus, I love getting letters! (Mom,) I already wrote them a thank you note. 


Remember when I was really excited about giving blood? It didn't go so well :(
I ended up with a huge bruise and not being able to give blood because it was going into me and not into the bag. It hurt at the time and now I have an insane bruise. Want to see it? 
I think you do. Sorry if you're squeamish. Pretend it's makeup! 
 

It's pretty gnarly. It looks worse than it feels which is a great quality about bruises. They make you look intense but they probably don't hurt that badly. The first and left oriented photo was taken Wednesday and the other two were taken today. It's starting to get yellow-y. Yuck. Anyway, let's move on.

You all know how much I love my dog. He's an awesome creature. When I was home over Thanksgiving, I took a few photos of him with my webcam and I would like to share them because he's so darn cute! I miss him a lot. 

As beautiful as his face is, I really like the bottom left photo. I don't know why he does that, but he hides his face like that sometimes. He's strange which is something I like about him a lot. 

I arranged these photos using "Collage Creator Lite" which is a free App for Macs, in case you are interested. It's very easy to use and if I had spent more than an minute (literally) I could have made something fairly sophisticated with it. I recommend it, and the "Lite" version is free. Who doesn't love that? 

Also, today is a great day because I've got great music. I've been listening to the album "Plans" by Death Cab for Cutie and the album "Simple Math" by Manchester Orchestra. The song "Summer Skin" by Death Cab is great for fall because it talks about summer ending and moving on. I love Andy Hull's voice and getting to see Manchester Orchestra live in Chicago with my best friend was such a blessing. 

The quality is somewhat low because the woman behind is was not exactly the world's most professional photographer. I had to mess with levels so you could see Andy Hull (dead center in the photo) which essentially means me running levers left and right until I get what I want. I really should have taken a photo class in high school. On the bright side (literally) check out our smiles! Perfect :)

Now begins the "Collection of Analysis" work for my Writing for Results course. I have to find 10 persuasive pieces of writing and then write a short (250-350 word) explanation of how their argument was structured. Seems easy enough! It means a lot of Googling controversial topics. Here I go!

ps- I know I've been slacking on the photos but this one makes up for it!