Here I Come Ida-California!!

Here he comes down the home stretch it looks like he's going to make it, just one more leg involving a final, a train ride, a few plane rides and a short car ride where I shall end up at my mother's house in Meridian, Idaho. A nice house where it has been snowing for the past two months or so. I GET A WHITE CHRISTMAS!!! This is something I have never experienced in my life. I have also never had Christmas with my grandma and grandpa on my Walsh side of the family mostly because they have lived in Idaho all of my life when I have lived in California. I'm excited. I'm also a little apprehensive because past tuesday when I get to Idaho I don't know what will happen while I'm there. Are we going to go to my grandparents house or what?

Well sometime between the 25th and the 28th I will be going to California, where I will stay for the remainder of my break, mind you this is a month long break, one that I am looking forward to like none other. So those of my friends who read this please contact me for I would to hang out and have fun with you!

P.S. I go back to SB on the 23rd of January.

Even more SNOW!!!!!!!

So, I went and had my big Astronomy final, which I have mixed feelings about, I finish the beast and I start to walk out of the building and it is SNOWING I mean coming down and OH MY GOD, I was not prepared mostly because I was still in my PJs after staying up all night and studying, I was jittery because of the three energy drinks(big ones) that kept me awake and studying all night with very little actual sustenance. I was overjoyed and annoyed all at the same time! I didn't know what to do with myself, I wanted to be mad at the world because I was tired and underdressed but I also wanted dance, play with the snow and catch snowflakes on my tongue. On I trudged back home to go to bed and I made it, a little wetter than intended but I made it.

I went to sleep.

I woke up around 2pm and it was white all over the ground, EVERYWHERE!!!! So, Em and I left my room to head across campus to her soon to be empty room where we plan on lodging ourselves in, getting warm and watching the snow fall outside.

Happy Holidays and here's to wishing you a white one.

SNOW!!!!!

Snow has come to Stony Brook! Last night we got about an inch and a half, I know it doesn't sound like much but it was incredible amounts of fun.

Em, Lauren, Caitlin and I all went to Outback and ate warm food hot off the barby. Anyways, we finished our food and went outside where it had snowed while we ate. We went outside and while Caitlin Started defrosting the car, a snowball fight began. That quickly ended due to cold hands and a yearning to go back to campus to gear up for an actual snowball fight! It was an epic fight with teams forming and breaking apart and forming again, it was quite intense. The fight ended and we decided to make a snow man, boy was that fun! He was a most excellent snowman, though I do not believe we named him, unfortunately some jerkoffs decided they did not like our snowman and promptly destroyed him. I was disappointed in the human race.

Well, I'll be home soon! First to Idaho for christmas and my mother, then off to the Bay to live for awhile and visit friends eat healthy and PARTY!!! So I'm excited!!!

BRRRR.....

My god it was cold today!

I took an epic journey to Wal-Mart and found myself confronted by below freezing weather. The first time I checked my computer said it was sunny and 31 degrees fahrenheit. I think if that happened in San Francisco the majority of the city's population would up and disappear nor would they be out watching high school football as so many were doing on my campus today. I went to Wal-Mart with my lovely Em and our friend Caitlin, who is very dear to both of us, and by the time we arrived at Wal-Mart it must have been 28 degrees not including wind chill. We spent a lovely warm time in Wal-Mart searching for various things we needed and didn't really need. After Wal-Mart we made the trek down the parking lot to the Olive Garden to have wonderful hot Italian food and a little taste of wine,ooh yay! illegality. Anyways, we had an awesome dinner and decided to go wait for the bus by Wal-Mart. The bus close to never came, meaning we waited an hour and a half for it and ended up calling the Stony Brook Police Department to find out when the next would be. They said it should've already arrived that it left somewhere around an hour ago.

Well the bus came about 20minutes later but it was ridiculous.

Pocket

Saturday, I helped paint the floor of Theatre 3 on campus, a very small black box theatre which Pocket Theater does all of their productions in. So we hung the lights the lights last thursday for The Pavilion, which opens this thursday and I'm really excited for. It took us  a total of six hours to finish hanging and cabling all the lights but there were still problems, those got resolved the next day luckily. I had a lot of fun at light hang and I learned a lot of technical know how and I feel very fulfilled.

After light hang went so smoothly we woke up early on Saturday, had some bagels and began to paint, quite fervently actually. We split up into teams, so to speak, where some of us cleaned the floor, scraped up gum and bad patches of paint covered tape. Others of us began to paint and oh did it look beautiful, the difference was night and day. Eventually four cans of paint were used and one of our group was sent to get more paint. This person went out and came back with two more cans. We quickly spread the last bit of paint on the floor and watched as it slowly dried, and dried. As we watched we realized that it was fully dried and that instead of the flat black that we started with the last two cans were semi-gloss so there were supremely splotchy parts to make it badly done. So we left it be.

Today we finished it!! Got another three cans o' paint and touched up the shiny spots and now it looks amazing! All thanks to the awesome folks of POCKET THEATRE!!!

LIFE UPDATE

So, it has been almost 2 months since I last updated and I thought it was a good time to update.

I have been having an amazing time here at Stony Brook! Classes are relatively easy, even though I did just have an awful midterm in Astronomy. The leaves are turning and it makes me want to write more poetry. The colors are amazing, things I only thought I'd see in the Northwestern United States.

In the musical world I've been having a blast! I got into the all male A Capella group on campus The High C's. As a group we just went to see Rockapella one of the best A Capella groups this country has to offer. It was amazing we took a four hour trip to the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT. They have an awesome campus in Storrs and they have seven, count them, seven A Capella groups on campus and all of them got to open for Rockapella, we made friends with one of the groups and hope to go back for an A Capella fest or something like that.

My knowledge of musicals has been expanding so fast I have something like eighty musical soundtracks now, including a lot of Disney, but I've fallen in love with the works of Stephen Sondheim, the greatest living composer of our time.

I've gotten heavily involved with the student theatre group here, Pocket Theatre, which is awesome group of actors and techies really devoted to the art that they love. We're putting on the Pavilion in a few weeks, which I hear is going incredibly. Next semester we're hoping to put together a musical, hopefully Songs for A New World by Jason Robert Brown. The actual theatre department recently finished their run of Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, which was amazing! I look forward to their rendition of Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge.

Classes here have been pretty good overall. I'm captivated by almost all of them. I'm taking Astronomy 101, Acting 1, Singing for Actors(another theatre class), a voice lesson, the Chorale here at Stony Brook, Writing 101 and Intro to Stony Brook(most useless class ever!). My favorite class of the semester is my Singing for Actos class, it is taught by the amazingly talented Marie Danvers, who played Christine Daaé in Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and who is also an amazing teacher. I'm having the most fun and learning a large amount on how to control my voice.

I must say that I have an awesome group of friends that I hold close to me here. I have had such good times, from climbing trees to discovering massive fish in the pond on campus. The goldfish, for lack of a better description was about the length of my arm, so roughly three feet.

Well it's raining at the moment, quite profusely actually and I'm going to be of to bed soon!

So I will update again soon!

Thanks as always!

J

24 Hour Theatre

Is an awesome thing but more on it later. cus i'm in class

BLECH!

It's hot and Muggy.

A Library and iTunes

I sit here in the massive library at my school after a night of hookah and crazy amounts of water falling from the sky. It's nice to find people who live on my floor that aren't LOUD, and I use capital letters just to give you a taste of what living on my floor is like.

I had my first quiz yesterday, just about the easiest thing ever. Dr. Carini would've been disappointed in the small amount of thinking I had to do. Five questions, that's it, five. I was confused I thought it was going to be just about the hardest thing in the world but it wasn't. It was a very pleasant surprise.

Anyways more later.

As Always,

J

My New Life

Here I sit in my way too small room thinking about what's going to happen when I go to Astronomy 101 for my first college quiz, two weeks into my college career. Its kind of shocking to think that I'm a college student. It feels like days have gone by since I graduated high school. I miss my crowd from high school (not that I haven't found friends).

The weather here is so strange. There is entirely no pattern to the weather, unless you call random a pattern, it'll rain for half an hour and then be perfectly sunny. At least it's not bloody hot any more it's nice and cool I actually had to pull out a sweater while getting Dunkin' Donuts! *excellent donuts by the way*

I miss home

New York

So I thought that I would talk about what's coming for me.

I'm moving from San Francisco, California to Stony Brook, New York which is about 60 miles east of NYC on Long Island. I'm really excited for this brand new part of my life even thought I have no idea what to expect.

It's going to be difficult to leave home but I have to do it eventually, so why not now? When I'm young and rearing to go and explore new things, meet new people and see if what I love is really what I love.

I'm planning on majoring in Theatre Arts and Marine Vertebrate Biology with a minor in Vocal Performance (Music) but for all I know I'll get there and decide I want to be a Lawyer(NOT). One just never knows.

The school is huge but apparently not big enough for all of the students because they are ten percent over capacity (which means as a freshmen I get shafted and put in a room with three people that is designed for two). Fun? I hope so. My roommates seem really cool from the e-mails that have been sent.

Overall it sounds fun. I leave on Wednesday, very very soon.

As always,
J

OW!!!

Okay so yesterday was INCREDIBLE but today I'm sore. I am not one who deals with pain very well, so this whole hurting thing, not for me. I'm in relatively good shape, or at least that's what I keep telling myself, but yesterday was the first time I had done a lot of strenuous activity. It was a whole lot of fun going from boulder to boulder.

Luckily there are miraculous remedies like Tiger Balm and Ibuprofen. I spent a good hour lying on my stomach while there was a massive burning sensation on my back and upper shoulders. The pain slowly crept away and now there is no pain! It's so nice, Tiger Balm is stupendous!

Anyways, Em and I planned on going to the river but we were too sore to go swimming. So we started our whole reason for being up here, moving Em's stuff and leaving behind her car. It's quite a process especially because she has quite a bit of stuff.

Well I'm off to help.

Thanks for reading,
J

Move... at the Speed of Water

6AM... Beep, Beep, BEep, BEEp, BEEP!

Get up!!!

That was kind of how this morning went. So, I got up moved the laundry over to the dryer and said "Okay J, pull yourself together you have a LONG drive ahead of you". Little did I know what awaited me after a drive filled with Phil Collins and stops at various locations to pick up things or say hello to friends.

We finally arrived at the Yuba River at the CA-49 bridge. For those of you not familiar with the Yuba, GET FAMILIAR! It's gorgeous! one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Crystal clear water staggers through gigantic fields of massive granite boulders. The water took my breath away with it's depth and cool 70 something degrees, I felt surrounded by things so much larger than me it gave me one of those "Wow, I'm insignificant" feelings. For the first time in years I felt like I had been released into the wild, to run free, I felt great. I climbed on rocks for hours and bathed in cool water while time passed by with no thought or care.

It's a good thing that I have Em to take me to all of these wonderful places.

Thanks as always,
J

Hello

Why hello there!

I must say thanks for stopping by!
So... I'm terrible at introductions so I thought I'd start with a Poem I was thinking about today.

Clumsy human hands sift through the shallow water,
Reaching for Stones to construct high rise buildings
Perfectly balanced on curved surfaces.
Stacked yet lying in solitude.
The world steps back and Nature is shown.

There's no title yet and it obviously still needs work.

Updates to come!

Thanks again!
J