Does spring break have to end? Tomorrow morning we start the drive back to school. The week has gone by fast, but it's been very relaxing. Basically all I did this week was sleep, row, and eat. There was lots of sleeping. Just about every night I've been in bed by 11, if not earlier, and today was the one day that I didn't take a 2-3 hour nap between practices. This morning at practice I saw millions of little jelly fish in the water, and also an alligator. The alligator was kinda scary since I've never seen an real on in the wild before this week.

I can't say that I'm looking forward to going back. I'm happy about getting to see Adam, and going to the John Mayer concert on Sunday night, but the work load is going to be a killer. It seems like I have a ton of projects and papers due in the next week or two.

Time to get to bed. Yeah, I'm a real party animal....or not.

So far spring break is pretty fun, except for some of the practices. Today we had practice at 6am and then had the afternoon off to go do whatever we wanted. It was nice to only have one practice instead of the usual morning and afternoon practice. Anne, Ana, Beth and I went to the Kennedy Space Center after we hit up IHOP after practice. The space center was fun, except it was during our usual between practice nap time, and so we were all pretty tired. In the evening some Captains staying at the same hotel as us cooked steakes by the pool and invited any of us who wanted to to join them. It was pretty fun, and the steaks were good. The main advice the officers all seemed to give was to not get married right after graduation. That seemed to be the theme of the day both in conversations with my friends and then at the cook-out. I don't really rememeber how my friends and I got started on the topic earlier, but once again the statistic that 75% of all marriages up to 18 months after graduation end in divorce. Last time I heard it, it was only 70% and 1 year, but the point still stands.

Happy St. Patricks Day.

Yay! I am now $30,000 in debt as of this morning. What am I going to do with all that money that I have all of a sudden, nothing for right now. Hopefully I'll start to invest it after I get back from spring break. Unlike a lot of my classmates, I am not planning to blow it on spring break, or buy a car...for now. Adam bought a car, so I'll mooch off him for it, that is, if I bring my CS380 grade up and have any time free from crew. Tthe cow loan is where they practically just give every cow $30,000 because it's a 1% interest loan that we don't start paying off until we graduate, and then it is over 5 years. In high school I thought it sounded so cool and was really excited about it. Now I don't care that much. My plan of action for right now is to forget I have it and continue to only use my paycheck money.

Tomorrow morning I leave with the crew team for spring break training in Florida. Yay! My parents are coming down and so I get to see them. Yay! No classes for a week. YAY!!! No seeing Adam for a week...sad. Hanging out with some of my best friends for a week. Yay!

Happy Founders Day.

Apple, peaches, pumpkin pie, who's not ready holler 'I'.

Good news! One of my TL's wasn't found on honor at his honor board yesterday. Very happy about that one.

We leave for Florida the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow is the last day of classes before spring break, today I have CCQ, and in an hour I have a PL300 WPR. Anne leaves tomorrow to go do her Truman interview in Ohio. I hope that goes really well for her.

I just made a connection between everyone cramming to get their sosh papers done before 1600 today and the sosh run. I guess I hadn't realized that it was today. Now I'm kinda sad that I have to miss it :( Oh well. I hope everyone gets theirs done on time.

Tomorrow is the big day. $30,000 at 1% interest. Yay for the Cow Loan.

Please pray for me and that I understand and pass CS380. Right now I don't know if I will pass. The concepts make no sense to me. I now understand why I am NOT an EE major.

The good news is that I apparently don't have a stress fracture in my foot. The bad news is that they aren't quite sure what is wrong. Apprently it may have something to do with the Lisfrancs joint. I had two sets of x-rays taken and on the 24th I have to go to a hospital off post to get a bone scan done. The doctor put me on a 60 day no running, jumping, marching, long standing, or apft profile. Yuck. He also said I could wear softshoes if they were more comfertable, but I don't think they really make a difference, so I'm sticking to regular low quaters. The upside is that I can still row.

I wasn't a really a baby blanket kid. Instead, I really liked to carry around those cloth diapers...the clean kind of course. Just call me wierd. Anyway, now I really do like blankets. They are so nice to cuddle up in, or with, as long as they aren't scratchy. Adam has a quilt that I really like and I'd joked with him about trying to steal it, and so last night I was over in his room and when I was leaving I pretended to try and carry it out with me. He of course saw me and I tried to give it back to him, but he knows I really like it, and so he's actually letting me keep it in my room for awhile. Yay :)

3 and a butt days till spring break :) Now if it would just stop snowing here.

4 days, only 4 days till Spring break. I have a feeling that it will be a very long 4 days. Spring break this year is going to be once again spent training with the crew team in Florida. I'm really looking forward to it, especially since my parents are coming down.

Last week I found out my summer assignment.
2 June - 2 July: Engineer CTLT at Fort Bragg, NC
3 July - 24 July: Home/ family vacation
25 July - 12 Aug: Small Unit Leadership Training (SMULT) at Fort Bragg, NC

The SMULT is also known as Robin Sage. This is an email from a cadet who did it last year:

"First it was a great experience, unlike no other I have had or probably will have. As females you never get to train with special forces, so this was a unique opportunity. The training is not hard, you really just do missions with the special ops. You are in the field the whole time though, I was out there for 13 days, but its not bad, the guys are really cool and you do cool missions, like 24hr recons and stuff. You get to kill your own chicken too. You learn a lot about how things should be from them too. They see things from a whole other perspective. You gain an appreciation and knowledge for what they do. They love to talk and tell stories.And they are soo cool, like I was calling officers by their first names because that’s how think things should be. It’s a very relaxed field environment too. No k-pots or anything, you carry an M-4 and wear black BDU's. its really cool. You can always do airborne or AA, but you will never be able to do this, so take advantage. Hope this helps, if you need anything else do not hesitate to ask. Best of luck!!"

Anne and Jamie also have it. I'm really looking forward to my summer now.

On a bit of a lower note, in 6 hours I'm going to have my foot looked at. I think I may have a stress fracture. It's been hurting for about 5 weeks now, and hasn't gotten any better. At least rowing doesn't seem to affect it at all.

MS = Maximum Suckfest

Military Science class is the bane of most cadets here. Yes, we do go to a military academy, but that does not mean that we were granted with some gift of knowledge and suddenly able to spit out perfect Warning Orders and OPORDs with barley any teaching. MS is where the Thayer method is most implemented, but in the worst way possible. Their teaching method is to give us a homework assignment, one very vague reference, and then fail us after we don't meet their detailed grading criteria. No joking, I'm pretty sure that more than half the Corps has a C or below in the class, and probably 25% are at a D or F. It is only after we fail that we find out what they were looking for, and what we were miraculously supposed to have known without any teaching on the subject or any real way to find out what they wanted. Somehow tonight I have to come up with the perfect concept of operation and scheme of manuever for a tank platoon defending against an enemy motorized rifle company. I have absolutily no training on tank platoons, and so therefore have no clue how to write a very detailed description on how I plan to destroy the enemy. I'll do my best, but until an hour ago I didn't even know the organization of a tank platoon. Hopefully, after failing the WARNO and only then being told how to write one, I won't do as bad on the Situatin and Mission.

To top it all off, the class is only worth 0.5 credits. However, it does play a very significant part in your class rank when everything works out. But seriosly, I've been working on the OPORD I have due tomorrow for 3 hours, and I still have a long way to go, and it's only worth 50 points. AUGH!

Wow! It's a Title

2k time again.....

Yes, I realize the above post has no correlation to the title.

It is so nice out today, and was so nice out yesterday. Right now the temp is 63 degrees, there is nice breeze, and blue sky. Spring is poking it's head in the door at long last. It's great kite flying weather.

What is not so nice is not knowing my summer assignment. Am I going to Florida with the crew team over spring break to train there, or going to Fort Benning to do a CQC MIAD. What I'm scared of is being stuck with Air Assault, not passing it, therefore not being able to row in the fall, and then missing out on spring break training next year with the crew team. I'd rather just do CQC right now and get that requirement out of the way, plus do some awesome training. However, if I tell my coach's that is what I want to do instead of train in Florida I feel like I'm letting down the team and putting my own self-interests above the team, especially with so few varsity girls actually going on spring break this year.

This morning after practice Coach pulled me aside and asked me if I would be the S1 for next year. I'm not sure what all that entails, but I agreed to it.

On Sunday I went to see The Passion. It was moving. Other than that I don't know how to describe it. It does not fit into the terms "It was a good movie" or "It was a bad movie." I'll just say It was.

I am very frustrated. I do not understand CS308 Computer Organization, or CS385 Design and Analysis of Algorithms. In CS385 the book doesn't make sense, the teacher doesn't make sense, and I am totally clueless. AAAAHHH! I don't understand VHDL code, although I am starting to grasp the concept of the project that I have due in, oh, 16 hours. This is so very frustrating. Why do I suck at this so much? Did I choose the wrong major? Am I magically supposed to have figured out how to code everything and prove everything on my own, so that all they have to teach me is how to undertand the concept of the problem?

In PL300 we learn that challenging people is good because it makes them more preductive. However, I am being challenged to the point where I want to just give up and throw my books out the window. These aren't brain stimulating problems for me, they are brain crushing, overload that leave me a psychotic mess with no work done at all because I don't even understand half of what the problem is asking.

Do I care about QuickSort, or the 3 billion other sorting techniques I supposeldy learned. No way! Why? Because who cares if it is NlogN or N^2. Big O-notation, inductive proofs, substitution method, dynamic progaming. What is dynamic programing? It's my teacher standing up at the board writing more stuff down with little boxes filled with numbers and different number trees, while I sit there trying to understand one tiny bit of what he is saying, and failing horrible. I must be as dumb as a rock. The book offers little to absolutely no help. And even if I can find the topic I'm looking for in it, I don't understand how the book is trying to explain it to me.

Basically, those classes suck for me and are making my life miserable. I needed to vent, or else I would be testing my algorithms book to see if it had wings as I threw it out the window.

YAY! Anne is a Truman Scholarship finalist. She goes for her final interview in March. She's one of my best friends, and my dinner buddy. It's so cool being able to say I know her. It's quite a privalige. Way to go, Anne! Good luck with the Rhoades, Marshall, and everything else next year. Better you than me. Truman Finalists

The Toby Keith concert was awesome. It was the best one I've been to here so far, of course the only other ones I've only seen here are Dave Matthews and OAR. The Sunday we get back from Spring Break John Mayer is coming here and having a concert. Adam and I went and got tickets for that one as well. A few songs into the concert tonight Toby took a break between songs and announced the best news of the night. He told he talked to the Supe and SAMI is canceled tomorrow. Every cadet in there started yelling at the top of their lungs, jumping up and down, giving high fives to each other, hugging each other, and had the biggest grins on their faces. I was no exception to that. It made my night, not that the concert alone didn't make it. I think the civilians, as well as Toby and the rest of the band, were a bit lost as to why we went crazy wild. I think Toby won over the hearts of the whole corps tonight by telling us the news of no SAMI.

Scotty Emerick opened for Toby and they sang a few songs together. That was cool.

Anne and I were the only two varsity members to show up to the afternoon practice today instead of the morning practice. We skipped out early to help Coach K get ready for a history banquet, but made it back down to the boathouse in time for the pizza with the novies.

Seeing as to how I now don't have to stay up all night cleaning and dusting every nook and cranny in the room for SAMI tomorrow, I think I shall go to bed. Yay!

Today was a Thayer day, but I didn't even realize it until it was almost over. Last night at midnight I had a CS403 resubmit of project 2 due. Then, this morning I had a homework set in CS380, a homework set in CS385, a project in CS350, and a WPR in PL300. I think the wpr went pretty well.

Tomorrow looks like a much easier day. In the morning I'm going to the Prayer Breakfast instead of practice,and so I'm going to the novie's practice in the afternoon. I don't have anything due tomorrow, which is really nice. Then, in the evening, Adam and I are going to the Toby Keith concert :) The only bad part of tomorrow is that there's another SAMI on Saturday and so my roommates and I will be up late cleaning after the concert.

I should be reading Mil Art right now or folding laundry, but tonight I haven't felt like doing any work. That's kinda bad since I'm supposed to be in BAG by tomorrow morning. In order to do that I have to dump out all of the drawers of my dresser and refold and rearrange all of my clothes. Fun times.

I was getting a foam frisbee out of my overhead this evening and when realized that a nutra-grain bar I had up there was ripped open and had a bunch of bites out of it with crumbs around. The mouse has moved from Jillians overhead to mine. I was stupid and forgot about the fact that we have that problem, so I hadn't put the cereal bar in my boodle box. You live and you learn.

Awesome weekend, great retreat, really good worship time, great speaker and message, tons of fun with my friends, boyfriend, people I am just getting to know, and people I consider basically my second family. Snow tubbing, line dancing, s'more making, singing, praying, sharing, ping pong, taboo, puzzles, sleep, books, learning, growing, sweeping, table setting, lady bug finding, children chasing, being tooken to jail by a three year old superhero, good conversations, laughing, crying, smiling, eating, fun.

This is a long 4 day week. We get Friday and Monday off of school for President's day, but Thursday afternoon is taking forever in getting here. I'm going on the OCF retreat with a bunch of people in my OCF group. From what I've heard, iIt sounds like it should be a lot of fun.

This week is kind of a Thayer week for me. This morning I had practice and then a Mil Art WPR first hour. I did really bad on the multiple choice and matching section, but I'm hoping that my essay was okay. Tomorrow I'm the assistant female transient barracks guard, so I'm hoping no girls are outproccessing right now. I also have two different project meetings with teachers and am supposed to help escort around a group of 4th graders at lunch.

Two weeks ago I felt like I was really improving and doing well in crew. Now I feel like I"m one of the slowest people on the team. Coach changed my rowing style a little and so now getting my splits down to where they were before seems to be really hard. It is very frustrating.

In the words of Anne, "I know, it sucks having people that care about you." I was bemoaning the fact that the S's found out from Jordan that I am a little sick and could possibly have strep. Their boys all have it, and since I've been around them recently, it is very possible that I caught it. I'm feeling a lot better than I was yesterday morning. Yesterday at the very beginning of 4th hour I ended up asking my teacher if i could either go back to my room or go to the health clinic. He let me, and so I wen to the health clinic. I didn't get to see an actual doctor, but they did give me a ton of over the counter cold medicine which helped. I took it, and after my nap after lunch my fever was down and I felt a lot better. Today I feel even better, except for a scratchy throat.

Two days ago I ordered my ring. It's a 14k white gold women's ring, with diamond dividers, and an 8 diamond cluster surrounding an iolite gemstone. I was happy because the cost came to $1670, which was $130 less than I expected.

A new Joe Bear episode was sent out last night. It'll be online sometime in the future.

I feel like crap. Stupid cold.

Happy Groundhog's day. The groundhog saw his shadow. 6 more weeks of winter ahead. Woohoo! Does he ever not see his shadow?

It's probably going to be a late night. Blah. It's my own falt. I still procrastinate too much.

Yester the S's had us over for the Super Bowl. Good friends, good food, good times.

Naturally flavored sparkiling water is one of the greast things on earth, at least in my opinion. I wish they sold it at Grant, or had vending machines selling it.

Yesterday morning my desktop computer mouse died. I think something went wrong with the wiring, because if I jiggled it around it would kind of start working again, but not very well or for very long. I ended up going to the PX later in the day with Adam and buying a new one. It is a Mircrosoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0. So far I like it and it seems to be working well.

Adam and I also bought a rubber rat to stick in Jillian's overhead. When she was cleaning for SAMI she found mouse droppings in there and freaked out. She had Mike come over and clean them out, while Alyson and I watched and laughed, and were kinda grossed out, as he procceded to pretend he saw a mouse, or pretent to eat the droppings, or take the half eaten cookies and shove them towards her and scare her. What a nice guy....or not. Alyson approved of the idea of hiding the rat in her overhead as a practical joke. I just hope she still talks to me afterwords. Ah well, if she doesn't immediatly, she will eventually.

SAMI and MAMI went well. The MAMI only took about 40 minutes becuase it only invovled cleaning the already clean dayroom. I went to bed at 2am the night before because we were up cleaning, and so I was pretty tired in the morning after the MAMI. My room had already been checked, and we were told it was a good room. The RTO was supposed to come through the company area, but the communication broke down somewhere and so nobody in the regiment knew that he had broncittus and wouldn't be inspecting. Due to that fact there was a lot of confusion about whether SAMI was still going on. Nobody was inspecting anymore, but we were kept in SAMI until about 10:40. Yesterday morning was a perfect example of how bitterness becomes prevalent here. Mainly it is due to indecision and a lack of communication.

Last night Annah, Anne, Leah, and I went over to the Hanlons and Annah cooked dinner and I helped her. We made a Thai dish and one other dish. It was fun and turned out pretty well.