Well, thus far, I would call this new week successful. Today, I made it through all my classes and ended up having a great night. Isaac, Sarah, Conner, Jacob, Ben, Dan, Ryan, and myself all went out to eat for Valentine's Day at Olive Garden (my dinner was on Sarah. thanks friend!) and then Ben, Ryan, and Conner, surprised my roommates with me with a crafted arrangement of fruit and our own personalized cards. This was funny because my roommates' cards had pictures of their pets and mine had a tree. Which is great for me, because I really love trees. Plus, the tray that they brought the fruit on had rocks on it (which I like to collect).

On top of all this, I woke up to pink roses from Maria with a Valentine's day note. Sweet roommate? Yes.

I am very glad for the start of the new week for a lot of reasons. Tomorrow is Monday and once I get past it, I will have 2 quizzes down, 1 paper down and a much slower rest of the week (hopefully). Plus in my literature and media class, we get to watch Eat Pray Love, which I haven't seen yet. AND, then I get to go out to dinner with friends for Valentine's Day.

In addition, and probably the bigger reason, is because I have been down for no reason and I feel as though a fresh start will be good and that's what Monday will be.

Time with my mom today was great and very much needed. I was glad to hear that my sister did so well in her mock trial event and to see pictures from her birthday party this weekend. Plus, my mom got to see some of my paintings. Speaking of, I'm excited to start some new ones. I have a few sketches I want to get out; they're starting to keep me up at night so I need to prime my canvas and get to it. If they turn out well, I'll post some pictures. (Although I say I'll put pictures up a lot and it never seems to happen. I'll try to make it and exception to the norm)

All day today I had a looming desire to pack up my car and literally just drive away. I packed a bag at 730 this morning, got ready, put it in my car, and couldn't make myself do it. Which ended up being a good thing because today was a rather great day and I would have missed it. I think restlessness has to be a part of the human condition... or something along those lines, at least.

Tomorrow my mom is coming down which is really good because I have missed her and getting some quality time will be nice.

I have recently had to limit my diet to not include wheat, milk, meat, chocolate, caffeine, sugar, chocolate (this doesn't need to be listed separately except for the fact that i LOVE it), soy, and refined flours (there's a lot of weird stuff too like, honey and aspartame, but those are not really significant). I, at first, thought that this would be really hard and that people would get annoyed with me for not being able to eat without constantly asking, "hey what's in this?" but all of my friends have been especially great about it.

In particular, I eat with 3 other friends about once a week and I saw two of them looking up how make spaghetti squash today and I know the other one looked up what types of food I could eat before he made dinner last week. It's such a good feeling to know that you have friends who are as unselfish as these 3. I really can't even describe how special it made me feel to know that they cared that much. It was definitely unexpected and is still appreciated.

So, if any of you are reading this, thanks! You made my week immensely better.

Seeing as how it's been forever since I posted last and my real motivation for this post is class credit, I think I'm a bad blogger. But that's ok. Maybe I'll get back into it.

I was going to originally write about how I've been reading back through Genesis but instead I think I'm finding myself in a more somber mood--most likely due to the fact that I'm listening to the Weepies and was told last week I was no longer allowed coffee by my doctor.

My friend, Tonia, and I were driving home to Dallas this weekend (both of us to see our sisters) and we got to talking about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and both men's writing. Tonia started telling me about a book by Lewis she was reading, a part of his fantasy series I didn't even know he'd written, called-- well now I don't remember the name of it but I'm going to borrow it so I'll edit this and put the name in it. Anyway, she was telling me that I would LOVE this book because the overarching theme examines harmony between creatures. The premise is that people have discovered a planet where everything lives in a peaceful coexistence with one another and the people were trying to explain our world to them and the concept of strife is incomprehensible.

This is one of like 3 times that someone has commented that I would enjoy this or that because of all the harmony in it--

Which is normal because I do like harmony and I've only recently realized how much. When I first took the strength finder's test for Baylor it told me harmony was my top strength and my second strength was connectedness. I didn't even realize that either of those were helpful. I wanted something like responsible or innovative. I've become more ok with them since.

--but it got me thinking about why I like the idea in the first place. The obvious answer is that EVERYONE likes this but I seem to bend over backwards to foster it at times. After a night of pondering the subject I decided it's because it's one of the core values taken from the garden of eden and it's like my spirit longs for it or something which makes sense if that's how we were all created to live.

Anyway, this post was originally about something other than myself but I'm not sure where I was going now that I'm here.

So, with that, expect more posts soon.

Have a happy Monday!

One more thing. I was journaling about the chaos that has encompassed my year thus far--all of it, the good and the bad-- and I think it's only right to write about how great it's been to have the apartment.

It's allowed me to get to know my new roommate Maria better. I'm really thankful for her and the way we've gotten so close so fast. I'm still not over the "Woo! I live with Maria" phase of moving in and it's been absolutely wonderful. Plus--and this is when you know you have a good roommate--we shop the same way at the grocery store. True roommie love? Yes.

I'm bad at blogging. I forget to do it. A lot.

Recently I've been really into music which itunes classifies as "easy listening". I find it incredibly soothing and open.

Here's a playlist I've made for myself.

Release- Helen Jane Long

(my favorite right now)

Your Hand In Mine- Explosions in the Sky

Requiem For A Tower- Escala

Sex On The Docks- David Byrne

3055- Olafur Arnalds

(minute 2 particularly but the whole thing is beautiful)

Glimpse- The Durutti Column

Hoppipolla- The Vitamin String Quartet

Leaving Paris- Craig Armstrong

Lux Aeterna- Clint Mansell & Kronos Quartet

The Winner Is- Danna/Devotchka

Thursday- Takenobu