Holiday Season

And I'm back! After spending four nights at home in Elgin, NE, I feel kind of refreshed. It's amazing how quickly I grow to miss all of my friends here even in being away such a short amount of time.



Thanksgiving in Elgin (well if you belong to the Catholic Church anyway) is not your typical holiday family-eat-lots-of-food celebration. You see, St. Boniface Parish puts on this huge Thanksgiving bazaar so if you are from the parish (like the Starman family) you have to work at it on Thanksgiving day and in the days leading up to the big event. My mom actually hates it because she grew up with the family feasts and get-togethers on the day. She always says that it's too bad us kids don't get to see what a "real" Thanksgiving celebration is. My dad on the other hand doesn't know any different. The bazaar has been going on for 80 some years, so for him, the bazaar is the excitement! It's an all out feast, just like at Grandma's house. As for me, I don't mind it because it's all I've ever known as well. It's kind of nice I suppose to get to share the holiday with not only your family, but also your friends and community as well. And what better than to serve others on a day for giving thanks?



On Friday morning, I convinced my mom to get up at 2:45 a.m. with me to brave the black Friday shopping crowds. We browsed through JC Penneys and Herbergers between 4 and 5 and I was shocked that the crowds really weren't that bad. But, I believe the reason was that all the people happened to be dispersed in ridiculously long lines outside of Shopko, Target and Walmart waiting to storm these stores when they opened at 5. Mom and I chose to check out Walmart's deals shortly after five. Perhaps the overflowing parking lot (people in the grass and nearby gas stations) should have been a far enough warning that Walmart was not the place to be, but we entered anyway. HOKEY PETE!! IT WAS MADNESS!!! The DVD bins were located right up front, which was the first fatal mistake as swarms of people blocked easy passage to anywhere else in the storm. I was scared I might be trampled and then I looked up to see a blind lady coming at me in the swarm. Now, I don't want to be prejudiced by any means, but I was scared for her. She couldn't see the masses shoving her and I could and I was scared. Long story short, Mom and I decided the lines weren't worth the wait and we exited Walmart and a few other stores as well. We went grocery shopping instead at Hy-Vee - might I add that people actually did the whole running bit here as well when the doors opened at six!!



The best part of break though was definitely seeing friends from home who I haven't been able to hang out with in far too long. Those nights and long overdue chats were a blessing.



Okay, now the exciting part of this post (hopefully you're still reading so you don't miss this): VESPERS!!! WOOHOOOO!! The official performance went down at 4:30 and 7:30 yesterday and it was simply beautiful (I hope the crowd enjoyed it as much as the choir did)!!!! For those of you who don't know, Vespers is the Mount Marty Choir Christmas Concert, held in the chapel with gospel readings between songs. This year we had an orchestra from Sioux Falls and it just made the music glorious. :) If I had to chose, I'd definitely say that the Chapel is one of the best places possible to sing with an orchestra - amazing acoustics. We also had a tenor soloist from California come down for the performance and he melted many hearts with his gorgeous voice! It was definitely one of my coolest memories here to have stood less than a foot behind the orchestra and sing Christmas music with them next to people I love. I could feel the risers we were standing on vibrating with the noise of the french horns!!! My only complaint was that my shoulders and back ached after standing for a good six hours (including a 2.5 hour afternoon rehearsal). Thanks to all of you who came down to support us and to enjoy the show. I'm sad that it is over and that was my last ever Vespers performance.

And that brings me to now - and now equals the last week of classes of the semester before finals. It's crunch time apparently and I'm still trying to figure out where time went.

Happy December everyone!!!

Eating Snails

Thanksgiving break begins for me in exactly 4 hours!!! WOoOOO!!!! :D I am very excited to go home to just be home for a few days. I can't even remember the last time I did that. And it make it even better, I have plans to see many, many friends who I love dearly and have not had the pleasure of seeing in quite some time - I am already thankful!!

I'm going to attempt to give you a brief synopses (while I'm in the process of rounding up my belongings to take home) of what has been going down here in and around my Bede dorm room.

1. Busy Person's Retreat.

I mentioned in my last post that this little thing was beginning. We had an opening prayer service on that Sunday night to kick it off and then met with individual spiritual advisors for 30 minutes every day for 4 days. Each of those nights there was an optional group prayer excerise as well. The outcome? It was definitely a wake-up call. Faith is one of those things that is easy to let slip through the cracks when life gets busy. It was kind of frustrating because I felt so busy that week that the relaxing time with my advisor and the group prayer things almost felt like a burden. Now the challenge is where to go from here? I Need to control this business thing!

2. Poetry.

I realized this past week that the semester is nearly over and that's bad news for my independent study Creative Writing class - it's really easy to let such a thing slip through the cracks as well. When there are no set class meeting times, it's almost as if the class doesn't exist until you check your syllabus and realize you have three weeks of class left and about half the books left to read. Oops! ... I did feel rather poetic this past week, but the busyness factor kind of kept that urge surpressed. If only there were more time to just read and write for the pure enjoyment of doing it!

3. New Moon

Have you gotten got up in all the hype over the new Twilight movie? Have you dressed like a vampire and gone to see it? I have - well I went to see it on opening day, NOT dressed like a vampire. I'm not really even a fan of the books. I thought the first movie was kind of not very good really at all, but I still drove to Sioux Falls (because Yankton was sold out) to watch it with friends. It turned out to be significantly better than the first movie in my opinion. Apparently the lady next to me thought so as well. A friend back at MMC sent me a text asking where I had run off to and I responded during the movie - I used my hand as a shield to block the light up factor of my phone, mind you, and it was on silent as well. The lady turned to me and harshly spit at me, "Um, EXCUSE ME, DO YOU MIND?" She then glared at me and turned her attention back to Edward. :S I didn't say anything. I was kind of intimidated. Naturally, I wanted to be angry, but I suppose I would have been irritated if my neighbor was texting during a movie I had been dying to see....who knows.

4. Fall Formal

Saturday night everyone dressed up all classy-like and headed to Hillcrest for the MMC Fall Formal. It was a great time with great friends!! See photos above! :) OH, it was also the source for the title of this blog. Before the dance, a group of us ate at a Cute Seafood Place here in Yankton (I honestly can't remember the name...it used to be the Lighthouse....) and I tried a snail and loved it! WOO! I felt very distinguished. :P

5. Omaha.

I spent my entire Sunday in the big city of Omaha. I had to go down there to a planning meeting for a Core Team TEC retreat I am helping with in January. Long day, but good works.

6. The End. Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!!!

Blue and Gold Days

It is currently 4:00 on a dreary Sunday afternoon mid-way through November and I am working and hoping that I restrain myself from any irritation when customers come in to pick up their medications while I am in the middle of a sentence. :) The afternoon is seeming to drag on forever because I am dreaming about taking a nap or talking to friends that I miss, or even of doing homework because Lord knows working here is not allowing me to get a whole lot of that done.

My fourth and final Blue and Gold Days (well as a Mount Marty student anyway...) has come and gone. It was another busy and very enjoyable weekend. As luck would have it, my Thursday night class was cancelled this past week, so I was able to switch my night at work from Friday to Thursday so that I could travel to the Dome in Vermillion with my good friend Briana on Friday night to watch her little brother and his Dell Rapids St. Mary's football team play for the state championship. Holy Toledo was it an exciting game!!!! The second half was by far one of the best halves of high school football I have ever watched. Dell Rapids staged a two touchdown come-from-behind run to take the lead. The exciting turnaround was highlighted by the coolest on-side kick I have ever witnessed (and it went off perfectly!) and of course stellar play by Briana's brother, Andrew (the only kid on either team I even remotely knew). But, despite the excitement, with two minutes left in the game, the opposing team staged a ridiculous drive and scored with somewhere around 30 seconds left to win the game. It was heartbreaking and I almost cried for the Dell Rapids players (remember, I didn't even know them!). I think I made a pretty decent stand-in fan though - I rounded up a T-shirt, cheek tattoos, tattoos on my hands (courtesy of Briana's mom), and even yelled and screamed and jumped up and down like I had been a cardinal all my life. :P

My Saturday began here at the pharmacy at 8:30 a.m. I worked until 1:00 and then left to actually join in the Blue and Gold Days festivities. I watched the Lancer women defeat Jamestown (I've heard they were before we defeated them, the #6 team in the nation???) in a rather impressive performance on the basketball court, headed straight over to Gregory Hall to sing with the choir for our Vespers Sneak Peak performance, trekked to the other side of Yankton to enjoy a supper at Arby's, came back and enjoyed the production of the Fall Play, and then bowled with a group of great friends and even the family of the year. :)

The Fall play was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was definitely worth a few laughs. It made me want to bust out my Clue board game and solve some mysteries. The whole cast and crew did a great job of putting together a fun play for family weekend. And bowling....well....I don't believe I ever broke 100. I through a few too many gutter balls and had sketchy form. BUT, I was able to somehow through the ball so that it jumped out of the gutter and back onto the lane to knock over a pin or two at the last minute (this happened to me twice!). The Stahl family (family of the year :) !!!!) made for a great cheering squad and threw a few classy strikes as well. All in all, it was great afternoon and evening and nice to have all of our wonderful families here to enjoy it with us.

And that brings me to today. I sang again this morning with the Chamber Choir at a beautiful mass in the Chapel and then headed straight over here. I am super ready to leave and head back to Mount Marty. Tonight's agenda = homework, food, laundry, beginning of the Busy Person's retreat (I'll have to remember to elaborate on that one in my next post) and SLEEP!!!! Have a great week!!

P.S. Less than a month left of 1st semester of my senior year!!!!! AHHHHH!!
P.P.S. I have a new piano book - a Christmas song one!!! YAY!!! I played Silent Night before Church this morning and it made my morning!

...

Great news: my phone decided to fall in sync with the rest of the world a couple of days after my last blog, I finished out my hectic spurt of working every day and I only have to work one night this week!

More great news: I have a test and a quiz tomorrow and I have decided I am definitely done studying for this Monday after putting in a good two hours earlier this evening...I'll just resume inbetween classes in the morning. That's not all, in fact, both of my Thursday classes are cancelled this week so I need only be present for choir at noon and work that evening.

....So, I present all of that great news to you to make myself feel better about my weighted planner. These final four weeks of the semester are shaping up to be pretty darn jam packed. For instance, this weekend = Blue and Gold Days = lots of happenings on campus = entertainment and fun (basketball games, tailgate, choir singing shenanigans, cosmic bowling, fall play....). On the downside, that also = little time for homework, and no time for final projects that need to be started here very soon.

You know, I'm beginning to feel like a space cadet, which is probably a sign that I should quit trying to discern my November plans for you on here and go to bed...I'll just give you a few tidbits. I have only tests and choir tomorrow, but I will follow that up with an afternoon full of tutoring and an evening of calling prospective students for ADMIT club. Wednesday evening I am pretty darn pumped about because as of 11:06 p.m. on this Monday night, I am not obligated to be anywhere that evening (that is if I manage to tackle my full two hours of ADMIT duty tomorrow night)! And then, at 10:00 p.m., SGA is sponsoring a $3.00 showing of "The Box" at the theatre here - you should check out the movie trailer on that one. Thursday is my evening at the pharmacy this week and Friday night I may perhaps travel to the Dome to cheer on some pretty cool high school football kids as they play for the state championship. And then....BLUE AND GOLD AND WORK AND BLUE AND GOLD.. bring it on week....

Oh Time...Whatever Time it May be...

Happy November 2nd, All Soul's Day, and Monday morning! I feel very energized this a.m. - it's one of those weird paradoxes that don't make sense: how does one run off of very little sleep but bound around as though completely rested? Why does being overtired make me feel giddy and carefree momentarily? Strange, but I'm definitely appreciating it on this Monday morning! I'm letting you know right now though that I'll be more than ready for a power nap this afternoon before heading off to work.

So how is life here at good 'ol MMC? Well, my phone is playing with the idea of "falling back" an hour. It decided not to conform for the majority of yesterday, tried out the whole time change thing for a couple of hours early last night, and then decided it preferred the old time early this a.m. Maybe it thought it was funny to play with my tired mind - when it's 2 a.m and your phone says it's 3 a.m., it gives you a bit of a panicky feeling. And now? My stubborn phone is still adamantly holding on to the old time. It's probably trying to pull me forward and push me along in this crazy thing we call life. :)

I decided to get up and run at 7 a.m. this morning. It was brisk out, but not freezing at all..beautiful actually. The sunrise is definitely timeless and the whole time change thing allowed me to run into it before heading off to microbiology class.

And in microbiology, I learned oodles of fascinating and somewhat disturbing information about the power of microbes. For your information, all of you cheese eaters are consuming blocks of living bacteria. In fact, food is bacteria, bacteria makes life possible and kills us, the concept of waste water treatment and bacteria involvement is really kind of involved (and just gross), and even that purified drinking water you are holding in your hand is a container full of bacteria. So, have a love, hate relationship with the little guys. Some are your friends, others are just random, harmless acquaintances, and there are those evil ones too....

So, here at the start of November, I am a bit sleepy, but energized by endorphins and sunsets, swimming in bacteria but kind of okay with it (ehhh....??? that one is questionable still), stressed that I work at the pharmacy both tonight and tomorrow (you know, there are some rude people you sometimes encounter in this world...I encountered a few yesterday afternoon at work..), but ready for the end of Tuesday night when I can say I survived six successive days of work without neglecting schoolwork too horribly, and marveling at life in general - forever amazed by great friends.

Count your blessings this week, sing a November song, chase a sunset and play off of endorphins. OH!!! AND CHEER FOR THE ELGIN POPE JOHN CRUSADERS as they take on Bloomfield in the 2nd round of Nebraska high school football state playoffs Wednesday night!!! If I can manage to get away, I'll be there cheering for my little brother Jeffrey (it's in Elgin, so my blogging fan faithful...if there are any of you...are more than welcome to come on down to cheer in person). He's pretty much a football stud and making the most of his senior season. There's nothing like the intensity of a good eight-man football game. :) See you there! :P