T minus 48 hours and counting

this week started with a day that felt like it should be friday and is seriously only getting longer. for some reason, there are a lot of class things, lab things, speaker things, and impossible-to-get-finished things that need to get done this week. funny how everything continues to find a way to come to a head at once. but in order to keep spirits up, i'm going to decorate this post some pictures from our pre-pumpkin carving trip to the corn maze last weekend. if nothing else, it kind of felt like home :) this first one shows me bringing up the rear after being scared by a man who had backed into the corn to try to get out of our way. i thought he was just another one of the "scary" halloween decorations that littered the corn maze throughout the incredible journey. and then he moved. and i screamed a little bit. sounds about right, doesn't it?

this week has seen both bill clinton and sarah palin at penn state. exciting, i think, but i think i forget how exciting it is for the pennsylvania natives in particular - who aren't used to counting so much in an election. proving to be a perpetual disappointment, i attended neither session, knowing that as an obama supporter, i would tell any republican that they should - in all good conscience - go hear clinton speak before deciding that they really didn't want to support the obama/biden ticket (it's all about making an informed decision, after all). but somehow i suspect that if i have to hear sarah palin utter the word "maverick" one more time, i might want to beat my head against the wall. so i abstained from both. plus, i'm from iowa. we get this kind of stuff all the time, right?

according to lacey, we got a lease in the mail today, so we are officially slated to become residents of oakwood avenue sometime next summer. i remember that copper beach was just putting a community in in columbia when i was moving away. and i remember that the rents there were a LOT cheaper. but i can hardly type a sentence with columbia in it without smiling. though few people really understand why i might be pumped about a mid-semester trip to missouri, i can't help but be pre-ecstatic that i will be back in CoMo in two more days.

the only last bit of "news" that is have is that it appears that nick and skew are planning a trip out this direction. i think the tentative plan is for them to fly in to dc and then robby, nick, skew, and i can meet up and at least hang out for the weekend (i don't have vacation days stored up like they do, so i can't be in attendence for their entire trip, but they probably need some quality boy time anyway...) the only catch at this point is that the original choice for the date of the trip is the same weekend that matt will be here for the michigan state game, so that doesn't work... hopefully we can get something put together so that we can all hang out. those central boys will just always have a special place in my heart. and they should, really, because they're some of the sweetest people anyone could know. karen can confirm that.

okay, i'd better finish up and some work and get to bed so that i can get going with "the day before i leave," but let me leave you with this image. tonight, the guy on the elliptical two machines to my right was singing....what i think was R&B....really loud...and nobody could hear the music playing on his headphones but him. it was awesome.