Christmas Shopping!

Okay so today is a Saturday, but I got up to an alarm and I have been working all day. This morning we watched the Hobbit! AWESOME!! It was super good and I want to go see it again. I cannot wait for the other parts to come out. After that me and the family, all six of us, went Christmas shopping...for each other. I got presents for 2/3's of my family and they are awesome. I won't say what I got them until after Christmas just in case, but know that their presents are awesome. Currently I am being rushed to order presents for the other third of my family before we play Settlers of Catan. I cannot wait to play it for the first time because Will Wheaton makes it look super fun in his TableTop episode where they played it. So go play fun games and have very merry Christmas shopping.

Love,
Alora

Crazy Studying

So I have been studying all day. It is soooo not fun, but I am taking a break for a little while to tell you about my day and what I have been up to on this lazy day of unlazy days. I call today such because I have been sitting on the couch all day (lazy) while working my but off (unlazy). Now Blogger spellcheck says that unlazy isn't a word, but I do not care. I have both of my portfolios mostly done, I have learned tons of new stuff for chemistry, but still not enough. I will most likely fail the final, but its okay because he curves it like 20 points because half the stuff we don't know.

Yeah so that is pretty much my day, but I also went to a surprise birthday party. My friend Mariah's birthday is this week, I think, so her roommate threw her a party. Free food, balloons, and cake. It was fun and now I have chocolate.

All in all my day has been pretty boring, but my High DM from D&D has given all of us electronic versions of the first editions of the two D&D magazines. I can't wait to read them.

Also, the Wogsland family has created a blog. I am a Wogsland if you didn't know and my Dad has created a blog called Adventures in Wogsland which I think is pretty witty. So you can go check it out. I do believe the entire family has the ability to post including me. My posts will be shared on my twitter and I will sign my name too.

I have to go write another blog post.

Love,
Alora

Finals

So I just finished my last class of the year, and I am borderline freaking out. I'm excited: "yay no more classes!" and terrified: "holy crap FINALS!!!" So now I am going to finish both of my portfolios today and then study for my finals all weekend. This is the plan, but I don't know how well it's going to work.

So um, I have to go study. :(

Love,
Alora

English Teachers

I have a pretty cool English teacher. She dresses stylishly, treats us like adults, and she doesn't play favorites. Oh wait yes she does. I will not name names, but she is one of the worst English teachers I have ever had. If she does not like you, you will not pass her class with above "B." However, if she likes you, you are free and ready to go. Finishing with an A. The problem is that English, like art, is arbitrarily based on the ideas of the teacher or the audience. My research paper, that I just got back, received a grade of a ninety-two. I know two other extremely smart people who both got lets just say not good grades as in D's and F's. They were some of the people that she didn't like. I am mad about my grade, but I have no one to be mad at because they are all mad at me for getting such a "good" grade. I have higher standards than that though. I want 95's or above on everything. A 100 average is something I shoot for. This may seem crazy, but it works. I have super high standards and then I push myself to do better. Everyone else just lowers their standards.

I need to stop now before I start crying. I am going to go talk to a living person or just listen to some music and calm down.

Love,
Alora

P.S. These words were written in a fit of passion, so any offense is totally not meant. Not all English teachers are horrible. In fact my one last year was quite awesome.

Tedious Tuesday

I have been exhausted all day long. This morning I got up at 8 after to going to bed around midnight and then I fell asleep after getting dressed and showering. I was almost late for work-study because I slept until 9:30. I was still tired after that. I am just mentally and physically exhausted and it is only Tuesday of Hell Week. I mean what is going on here?

Whatever. Today I did some fun stuff in the office. I made a birthday bag for our December birthday (not you Mom), and I wrote notes to prospective PEGs. I had so much fun. I got to write in fun colors to hopefully next year's freshmen. My hand cramped up after a while, but it saved me from cleaning out one of the PEG vans. Yay! I am working again on Thursday, but then I am off for the rest of the semester.

Also, after work-study, I was still in the office and I helped Candice make a twitter for Virginia Paws for Pits her non-profit pit bull rescue. She works all over Virginia helping pits find homes. On Friday she brought this adorable puppy in that was being adopted later that day. She had a broken jaw and was blind in one eye. Her veterinarian was adopting her. She was adorable. I spent a good 20 minutes petting her before one of my classes. Ok enough with the adorableness because I have no pictures to share it.

Lab was fun. Not. We just worked on worksheets. Also, a photographer came for the newspaper and took pictures of me just writing on paper. Blurgh. It was the last lab too. I am going to miss my awesome lab instructor so much.

Madi is apparently sick. I have been hanging out in the lounge all day (not because she's sick though. Just cause).

I'm going to go to bed now. Go, follow Virginia Paws for Pits.

Love,
Alora

Manic Monday

Yes I am referring to the song and right now I am eating yummy cheese from Chanelle. It is really good. She gave it to me as a bribe to get me out of Brittan's bed. I was trying to sleep in it because it was super comfortable. I was tired too. I got in a ten minute nap though and now I am not tired. Yay! Oh my dead wizard god this cheese is good. It's almost out too. I do love food which reminds me. Today I dinner I was eating with Madi and Hannah and Brittan and I got repeatedly smacked with hands and breadsticks for saying band is awesome. Please all band members let us unite! I sat there and took it though. I am proud of myself. Usually when someone hits me, I hit band and everything falls apart. Today, however, two people hit me and I did not fight back once. This is not to say I wasn't defending bands honor, but I was at a table of choir people and you know how they are. I love choir, but band is so much better. Yes, I did just say that.

Moving on.

I have gotten quite a bit of work done. I am finishing my chem lab tomorrow and I got most of the way through my English portfolio. I worked on my Personal Finance portfolio too.  Also in fencing I finally got to do wet fencing where you are hooked up to a machine and it registers whether you hit on target or not. The foils were being really pissy though and they kept going off even if they didn't touch anything. It was still fun though. I fenced twice, but then I left early to come back to the dorm and work some more. I am going to go to bed soon because I am exhausted. I wanted to tell you guys about my day first though.

Last night a water main in front of one of the main buildings on campus broke and flooded the sidewalks in front of Academic and the library with mud and white insulation. This morning they were still cleaning it up at nine and the water main wasn't fixed till around four. They did a pretty fast job and the water was only off for about two hours and I wasn't even in the building. Yeah I took a picture and tweeted it which you can see on my twitter.

Also I have been working the third floor lounge all day. I moved in around 9:30 and I'm still here working away. Yeah so the whole area is strewn with my and Hannah's stuff (I don't think that sounds quite right). So...um...I seem to have lost my train of thought. I wanted to talk about something else, but I do not remember what it was. It'll probably show up in a later blog post.

Night. Night.

Love,
Alora

P.S. My cheese is gone. It was Laughing Cow, Garlic and Herb. super yummy you should all try it. No, I was not eating it with crackers. It tastes just as good right out of the little triangle of aluminum foil.

Day 1 of Hell Week

Okay so Hell Week is the infamous week before finals where everyone studies night and day working their buts off. However, so far I haven't done much studying. This weekend has been a break from the huge loads of work that I had last week. Yesterday I sort of worked, but mostly I watched TV and slept. I slept till about 1ish, but I kept getting up and falling back asleep because Madi's phone was going off like crazy. Also, I was really hot underneath my blankets because I fell asleep in Madi's bed and she has weird heat reflecting sheets. Blurgh. Oh well. Yeah, today I have worked much more than yesterday and played on the internet. I watched YouTube videos of cute British guys (danisnotonfire and jacksgap).
 I have only watched one episode of something which was...um...actually I don't think I have watched any TV today. Hmm... oh well.I am going to watch stuff later. Actually I need to go get my laundry.
So bye guys.

Love,
Alora

Computer Problems

Okay so I have to do a final portfolio in two classes and I have been working on my one for personal finance, but it turns out that in my obsessive backing up of my documents in Dropbox I replaced the newer documents with the older ones and I no longer have digital copies of one of my assignments. I can't find the paper copy either. I just hope that I can't find it because my TA hasn't handed it back yet. I want to go cry now. I think I'm going to go to bed and hopefully when I get up tomorrow everything will be better.

Thanks for always listening to me internet.

Love,
Alora

Christmas Parades

Okay so it's only now December and I have done two Christmas parades this week. What is wrong with people? The Staunton Christmas parade was on Monday and the whole VWIL (Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership) core was marching in it. Mind you, Monday and Wednesday are two of my busiest days. I had the parade at 7:00 and then fencing at seven, so I did the parade (luckily we were second) and then changed and ran up to fencing. I got in a good half hour of fencing before I came back to do my but ton of homework. I stayed up late Monday night finishing my lab report.

After the Monday parade the rest of the week went pretty smoothly. I had an interview with a reporter on Wednesday, and I got Brittan's uniform for yesterday's parade. Ugh. I had to leave band an hour early for her because she didn't come because she was too busy studying for chemistry. The same test that I was going to take and yet I went to band. Oh well. She got her uniform and it all worked out.

Side note on the chem test. I think I did AWESOME. It was not half as hard as I thought it would be.

Back to the parades --> So in class on Wednesday we got Jingle Bell Rock and we played it in the parade on Friday. It sounds super cool and the saxes have an awesome part. The parade on Friday was in Lexington, VA, and for it I missed an hour of Dungeons and Dragons. It was super fun though. We played two Christmas songs in a loop and our director Colonel Brodie was finally able to come to one of our parades. We played quite well and we marched awesomely too.

WE GOT FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Band got FIRST PLACE!!!!!!! AHHHH!!!!!!! It was so awesome. We have not gotten any awards for our parades this semester and for our very last parade we got FIRST PLACE. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about the core awards three platoons for military performance every parade, and we got FIRST PLACE. If you hadn't noticed I am super excited.

Also this was our last parade of the semester so no more parade shoes until next year. Yayish. Parades are stressful, but fun. People clap for us and smile and cheer us on. It makes me feel very special. On the other hand though it is freaking hard to keep alignment while playing. I have mastered marching in step even through wheel turns, but alignment is hard.

OK well all in all my week has been pretty stressful running from parades to homework and back.

Well I will see you guys next week in Hell Week.

Love,
Alora