Suprise!!

Woh, look. I'm not dead. Shocker, right?

I just need to throw something out there -- I have never used my brain this much in my life. Seriously, I thought about it today, and I was thinking and moving and in class and working and just DOING stuff for twelve hours straight today. My "breaks" consisted of me, rushing across campus to my next scheduled appointment, and tomorrow looks even more hectic. Everything has been moving at a nonstop pace since I got back to school, and please don't think that I'm complaining about it; I'm not. I'm busy and stressed and more than slightly overwhelmed sometimes, but I love it. I love being back here, and I love the environment. It's been wonderful.

The only sad part is that I have had loads of ideas for funny blogs floating about in my brain, just like a distant, happy memory. Remind me to tell you about the completion of my journey into becoming Julie. It's somewhat amusing. Also, you should definitely hear about my job. All that I can say is that as awful as this summer was, being a writing consultant is equally wonderful. The pains of being a Russian student, the fun of living in an apartment with all girls, the irony that come with being a college student -- I have so many stories for you and no time to tell them!! Truly, it's a travesty of epic proportions.

Naturally, I have a million hours of homework and other commitments in front of me this evening. But I missed this. And I rather miss all of you. Unfortunately, this year is the antithesis of my freshman year -- I now schedule my life by the hour. I'm not kidding; it's ridiculous. My point is this: hi. We'll talk soon. Don't worry.

:-)

To My Devoted Following.

Dear Mrs. Geniac and Taylor,

I am sorry that I have been unable to entertain you with silly stories lately...writing for pleasure seems like a distant dream. I am currently cemented in the middle of my day, T-2 minutes until sociology starts and that much closer to another homework filled evening. Trust me when I say that I miss you, even more than I miss this blog...but I'll be back sooner or later. It's inevitable.

Oh look, we're starting. Love you both [and any other readers who stumble upon this sad, neglected forum]. Come visit soon!!

xoxo.

This May Come As a Shock..

I'm going to stop sugarcoating things: I love men. Older men. They're my favorite.

Now, if you'll excuse my mother's heart attack in the corner due to my bluntness, I will explain. I'm talking about professors [see, Mom? That's not so bad now, is it?]. I don't really know why, but for some reason I have had the most absolutely endearing string of older, male professors, and I think that they are just completely cute. And not cute in the way that I think that the kid in my Honors class who looks like Elvis is cute -- he's cute, although his chin's resemblance to that of the King's is kind of silly. No, I think that my old man professors are cute like babies are cute...I think that's fitting. Some girls love babies, while I love adorable little old professors. Besides, I'm not very good with babies. They always cry when I hold them.

My Honors history prof from last year, for instance. He has to be in his sixties or seventies, and he teaches a year-long Honors course with his wife. It's the ultimate academic adventure, let me tell you. Professor Wife is a wickedly intelligent woman and a wonderful professor; she coerced me into Russian courses, so you know she's good at her job. She's loud and intimidating and scary until you get to know her, at which point she is one of the kindest people you will ever meet. By contrast, Professor Hubby is just a charming, quaint, absent-minded man who wandered about class and giggled when lecturing on the French Revolution. He once said that he wanted to write a book about France's history and title it The Dynastic Hangover. If I were to walk across campus and see Professor Hubby quite literally chasing butterflies, only to be distracted by a rare bird call, and then turn away due to some sort of mythical creature fleeting across the grounds, it honestly would not surprise me one bit. He has that much of a child-like innocence to him.

My Honors Sociology prof from this semester, however, has enough attitude for his entire department. While he has an obnoxiously clear-cut agenda to challenge his students ideology and change our thinking process, he is rude and sarcastic and hilarious and therefore, I love him already. An aged sort of hippie, from the looks of his casual, short-sleeved button downs and the wool socks beneath his sandals, he jumps around class with an energy that makes me question its source. Professor Hippie talks faster than Daddy on caffeine, and the topics fly by so fast that none of us can get a word in anywhere. Though I have an inclination that things are going to get very interesting very quickly [he consistently says, "So maybe you're from a conservative, middle-class family from West Michigan," with mirth and a touch of condescension], I cannot foresee being bored, if for nothing else than the fact that I'm kind of anticipating his grumpy old man days as being very entertaining.

Professor Hippie's counterpart is a sort of hybrid between Hippie and Hubby. This particular old man is very paternal, grandfatherly and sweet, but there is a certain sense of biting "stick it to the Man" vibe emitting from him. He's a slight man [especially in comparison to Professor Hippie's boisterous, lumbering persona] and he has a shock of full, white hair on his head that he runs his hands through when he's thinking....he almost resembles Dustin Hoffman, in a way. Yes, Dustin Hoffman with a beard. Professor Hoffman is seemingly just so sweet, but he has the same peculiar energy as Professor Hippie...it really makes you wonder...he gets quite excited about his topic as well, but as it is psychology, you can basically say nothing wrong in his class. "Oh, yes, of course, that is interesting," he would say to even the most oddball comment. "I have never thought about it that way -- please explain why you think that!" You see? Completely charming old man.

Even my English professor from last year was awesome. He was laid-back to a fault; when looking over the syllabus, he would say things like, "I mean, Milton is good, but Paradise Lost is so long and boring...do you guys want to read all of it? I don't really care...no? Okay. We'll just do sonnets." Brett was much younger than any of the other professors that I'm talking about [probably somewhere in his forties], and he looked like a combination of men from my family -- it was eerie to walk in the first day and stare straight into the face of a pseudo-Creamer. Sometimes he seemed bored about his topic, so he would regale us with any number of unrelated and semi-inappropriate stories...it was a great class, albeit almost unproductive...

I just love male professors. Obviously, some of my best and favorite professors have been women [Mrs. Jones, Gail, Professor Wife...], and it's not like there is any schoolgirl crush that has exploded into the Indiana Jones situation [you know, where the girls in his class wrote "I love you" on their eyelids and blinked veeeery slowly?], but still. I can't help it. I love men.

Oh, and if somebody could resuscitate my mother, I would appreciate it. I would, of course, but I have a class with Professor Hippie soon...

Forever and Ever.

I love how friendships grow and change and mature and morph over time. It's really an incredible thing -- when I think about the first time I met some of my closest friends, it amazes me to see how far we've come. My head nearly explodes sometimes at how God perfectly orchestrated everything for us. Take, for instance, Jessie. Who would have thought that the random girl I met in the lobby my second day of college would turn into one of the best friends that I have ever had?

The first time we met, I think that I scared Jess. Between my terrifying nighttime look [glasses, disheveled ponytail, sweatpants – it’s enough to make anyone cry], my abrupt question [“Do you get phone service anywhere in here??”], and instant bond twenty minutes after we met [“Do you want to be Best Friends??!”], she had to be at least a tiny bit overwhelmed. Something, however, clicked between us the very instant that we met, and ever since that moment, one year ago today, she has been a rock in my life.

Jessie is different than any of my other friends. I have a lot of “best” friends. There are six or seven girls in particular who form a sort of counsel for me, a soundboard of love and advice and encouragement and laughs. They all mean everything to me, in a different way. Jessie fits among them in a place all her own. I think that it’s because when I met Jess, it was the first time I instantly bonded with someone because of our common foundation in Christ. Ours was my first friendship that was forged out of a need for fellowship. From the very start, Jessie and I were sisters, and relationships between sisters are always different than relationships between even the best of friends.

There is just something about Jess’s passion and love for Jesus that is inspiring. Her drive to know Him better, to be His light into this world, to live every day for His glory is something that I had never seen in motion before. I think that when people look at us, they see me as a leader, because I’m loud and obnoxious and I like to be in front of people. Jessie is more timid, shy perhaps, but believe me when I say that she garners more confidence and strength from her faith than anyone I know. She and I faced some intense trials last year, and she was the strong one. She was faithful and loving and she helped carry me through the situations. I do not know where I would be right now if it weren’t for her friendship.

And it’s not like we sit around, quoting Scripture in a dark room for fun. We have the best time when we’re together. In merely a year, we have made the most incredible memories – adventures downtown, spontaneous concerts, spring break, late night roadtrips, and all nighters all over campus, just to touch on a couple. I’ve never been as instantly comfortable being exactly myself with anybody but Jess.

It completely and utterly blows my mind to think how perfectly God placed us together. Jessie and I compliment one another so well, that we balance each other out, highlight the strengths and help with the weaknesses. I could write an entire book about what an amazing friend she is, how caring and sensitive she is, how resilient and hopeful she is, how much fun we have together. I could keep going and write that she is purely beautiful, inside and out, and that she makes me think and laugh and love more. I could keep going and going and going, until the only person who was still reading at the end was Jessie herself, because everyone else finally decided that for a person to be that wonderful, she must be fictional.

A very wise person once looked at us and said, “You guys are like the best best friends.” That made Jessie and I smile at the time, but now looking back, it’s true. Jessie has helped define my college career so far, and our relationship has deepened and matured more in one year than I ever thought possible. I literally feel like I have known her forever, and even though that isn’t the case, I love knowing that we have the rest of our lives to keep being friends. I really can’t wait to see what else God has in store for us, because the future only looks brighter.

Keep Going Until The Pavement Ends

They say opposites attract. Katie and I are quite opposite...sometimes. Sort of. Okay, so we're really not at all -- we both love to laugh [I prefer mine snort-free, however] and have fun, we both love the non-food at Kleiner with an unhealthy abandon, we both love our friends and families more than anything else in this world, and we are both directionally and domestically challenged. It's true; as much as we may want to, Katie and I could never live together, because we would burn the house down with our "cooking," and then we'd get lost whenever we left on a desperately needed fast food run. I'm sure our mothers cringe at the very idea.

Regardless of the fact that I cannot read, give, or follow directions at all, there is one circumstance under which my inner compass resembles my father's instead of my mom's, and that is in a mall. I know, I know, it's pathetic, but it's true -- ask any of my friends or my sister, when there is shopping involved, I have the nose of a bloodhound. Even if I have never been INTO a certain mall, I instinctively know where to find the stores I want, I sense when I am going the wrong way, I can find whatever I am looking for. It is beyond strange.

Because of this, I had enough faith in my shopping-center savvy [and GoogleMaps, naturally] to think that even Katie and I could find Woodland Mall on Wednesday morning. The last time I went there was with my genius friend Alyssa, and it was easy to get to...of course, Alyssa uses words like, "north" and "east" in regular conversations, so maybe she and I are more opposite than Katie and I...but either way, the mall was one turn off the highway, and Katie and I were already IN the general area, so how hard could it be to find??

Though construction tried to thwart us, nothing gets between two twenty-year-old girls and the notion of spending the money that they should save for things like food and rent. We suffered minor delays and opposition, but when we pulled of the highway at the correct exit, we were one turn, 8.9 miles, and approximately 17 minutes from our destination. Sure, it confused us a little bit that we passed Rivertown, the shopping mega-center that so delighted us when we were younger. "I thought that they were on opposite sides of town..." we said to each other. We re-examined our directions, though, and according to them, we were right on track. So we kept going.

I don't know what our first clue was. Maybe it was the fact that we were looking for 28th street, and I noticed that we were crossing streets like 46th, 52nd, 78th, 83rd...but then again, maybe the street numbers start over after 100, so we kept going.

Maybe it was the fact that civilization slowly started to trickle behind us, a distant memory by the time we reached the first cornfield. Maybe it was around the time that the cornfields became so plentiful that they gave way to cabbage patches and darling little farms, complete with the red barns and the silos that Julie loves so much...maybe then we should have figured it out. But then again, maybe a burst of commercialism awaited after the next light and we were almost there, so we kept going.

Maybe by the time we passed the North Door County Store, we should have known that a mall was nowhere nearby. I mean, I'll bet the little shack still accepted credit from Ma Ingalls and bartered for fresh eggs. Something was definitely wrong, even though we had followed the directions PERFECTLY. In a last vain attempt to find the ever elusive mall, we kept going.

Finally, we lost hope. Choking on laughter at our ridiculous situation, we decided that at the next light, we would turn around and try to figure out where we were going. We didn't even get that opportunity, though, because there WAS no "next light." The pavement ended. We had driven until we ran out of road.

Obviously, we turned around, and by the time we pulled over at the North Door County Store, there were two people sitting on the front porch [see? a store with a front porch...because they've made on of THOSE in the past one hundred years...] and I rolled down the window. "You lost?" they asked, inherently knowing out situation.

"Um, yeah," I said. "We're trying to get to the Woodland Mall."

Their mouths dropped open, and they stared at us incredulously. The red-headed woman barked a laugh. "You're really lost," she said.

The nice hillbillies gave us directions to Woodland, but at that point, we didn't really want to risk it...so we ended up at Rivertown, safe, familiar Rivertown.

And so, our shopping adventure turned into quite another adventure, but hey -- we figured out where Woodland was NOT. And it was hilarious. And it merited a blog. And we still got to hang out and start this year right. And Katie and I have the rest of our lives to figure out directions. And learn how to cook. I think we're going to be all right.