What is wrong with Billy Joel?

I don't mind Billy Joel's music. I think his hits from way back when such as Piano Man and Uptown Girl are really good. But it seems our friend Billy (I guess we're on a first name basis) is getting a little too old. In the past three years, he has been in three car crashes, all caused by him. Unlike most celebrities, he was not under the influence or on drugs; he is just a really bad driver. In his most recent accident a few days ago, Billy just randomly crashed into a house. The article, which you can go to by clicking on "car crashes" above, told us not to worry because he was unhurt. Frankly, I am more worried about the innocent people in the house! I think that being a bad driver is reason enough to get your license taken away.

Pictures

I love pictures. I take my camera out with me a lot. I don't take it to class, or out to eat, but I will take it out if it's the last day of class, or if we're dressed up going out to eat. And then there's the obvious places where I take pictures, on vacations, parties such as weddings or BBQs, etc. You get my drift. With so many fun things happening this summer, expect a lot of pictures in my journal in the future! Recently both my sister and brother went to dances, which they were nice enough to send me pictures of. My sister is in law school in Tulane. Her boyfriend goes to the med school at LSU, which is located in the same city. Here's a super cute picture of them at the med school ball they have every year.


My brother is in his junior year at Troy High School. Yeah TC! Anyways here's a cute picture of him and his date before going to the dance.


I would put a picture of my parents in here to complete the family, but again I don't have any on my computer! I really need to find a scanner on campus. But I have two more weeks before I'm back in Michigan, so I'll be equipped with a digital camera and a scanner. If anyone has recent pics of anything we did, send them to me!

Chris Perry gets drafted!

I'm sure you can tell from my subject heading that one of Michigan's finest, Chris Perry, was picked in the first round by the Cincinnati Bengals. Here he is!


Hopefully some other Michigan players will get drafted like Navarre, LeSueur, and Pape. We shall see!

Cell Phones

I first got a cell phone in college. I think my mom suggested it because I was never in my room and my family couldn't get ahold of me. I tried to hold off on getting a cell phone, but I knew I would need one eventually for a couple reasons. First, Matt was going to law school so we would need some way to talk inexpensively. Also, EVERYONE started getting cell phones, so obviously I had to jump off the cliff as well. :) So I have a pretty good cell phone that does all it's suppposed to do. For those of you who care it's a Sanyo SCP-4700 with Sprint service. Now there are all these new phones with color screens and downloadable rings. I am pretty tired of my rings (since I can't download new ones) and I would like to see something else besides a green screen with black writing. So I'm going to ask my parents for a new phone for my birthday. I have a lot of time since it's in October. Even though there will probably be new phones out by then I went to sprintpcs.com and looked at what they have to offer. I like this one:


If you want to see all the different phones sprint has, you can click on the picture.
When I first heard of the phone that takes pictures a couple of years ago, I thought it was a dumb idea. But my brother got a phone similar to this a couple months ago and it is so fun to play with. One time we were in a waiting room with nothing to do and all we had was our phones. We started using these picture backgrounds that are built in and took pictures of things and people in the hospital. This one is pretty funny.
We used the "busted" background with a Christmas decoration. We were REALLY bored.

Winding down

It's Monday again, Mondays are always blah. At least next Monday will be my last week of classes before the end of the semester! That will be a good Monday.
For my upcoming Cali trip, I'm trying to get reservations when we're in LA to either Dolce or the Ivy. These are both "star studded" restaurants. Even though both of these places are hot spots among celebs, they've gotten horrible reviews for their food. One review even went on to say she thought the food at the Ivy didn't even taste edible! It's also really overpriced. Citysearch said to expect to pay between $80-$100 for two. Despite all these horrible things, we'll probably go anyways, we'll just get the cheapeast things on the menu and then go to McDonalds afterwards!
I may go bowling tonight since I'm not doing anything. Bowling is a weird sport for me. (Is it a sport?!) Whenever I roll my ball down the lane it either goes perfectly straight or it curves. I have no idea what I do to make it go straight or turn. So sometimes I'll have a game where I get a couple strikes, a couple spares, and do pretty well. Or I end up with a 60. Since I don't really care what my score is, I don't think my game will change, haha.

Feelin Hot Hot Hot

I'm off to the mall for a few hours today. I got these coupons from Victoria's Secret for free stuff. Since the store is pretty expensive (except for the semi-annual sales!) I definitely need to take advantage of the coupons. I also need to go to Hallmark and buy a few cards. I love getting cards for people, I have no idea why. I read some statistic that 80% of card buyers are women. I guess that sort of makes sense.
It's supposed to be a record high of 88 degrees today. I miss warm weather, but not really hot weather. Where's a swimming pool when you need one? In Ann Arbor, if it was super hot, a bunch of us would go over to Courtney's since her appartment complex had a pool. I don't know where the nearest pool is around here. I guess I'll have to wait until I get back to Michigan. For those of you who don't know when I'm coming back, it'll be around the weekend of May 9th. YEAH!
The NFL draft is coming up next week. I don't think it's that exciting, but to Matt, it's a holiday! He created a site devoted to the day and his predictions. To check out his very cool site click here. If you click on the picture of us, it'll take you back to my blog! Isn't that clever?
Oh and if you didn't watch the finale of Apprentice, Bill did win. Who called it? Yep that's right. (Read my last entry) I heard that Bill is now dating Jen Schefft, who used to be with the Firestone guy from the Bachelor. It's funny how Reality TV stars are celebrities now, what is the world coming to?
Sidenote: I am not really feeling predatory right now, I just wanted to see what the predatory mood star looked like.

Must See TV

There's a lot of shows on tonight that I have been waiting for. First of all, there's a new "Friends" on. This past month, NBC has been showing the best 6 episodes in the "Friends" spot, instead of new "Friends" episodes. Of course the best 6 episodes are the ones I've seen a million times so that was no fun. Then there's the 2-hour finale of the "Apprentice" where we finally get to see who ends up running one of Trump's companies for a year. I think both Kwame and Bill would do a fine job, but I think Bill will win just because Kwame has the awful Omarosa on his team and he's too laid- back. Bill, on the other hand, DOESN'T have Omarosa, and seems like more of an authoratative leader. I would feel bad for Kwame if he got this far and lost, but then I realized that even if he loses, he'll go back to his cushy job making a lot of money anyways!
I was going to go out tonight and order a chocolate martini, but I think I'm staying in for these shows! I had the best chocolate martini ever at Friday's the other day so I asked the waitress to ask the bartender for his recipe. She wrote it down and put next to it "Sledders Chocolate Martini." I can only assume that Sledder was the bartender, but she didn't really say. Now that I have the recipe, I'll just make them on my own. If you want to try it, Sledder's recipe is:

1/2 ounce of vodka
3/4 ounce of vermeer (chocolate liquer)
1/2 ounce of frangelico
1/2 ounce of half&half milk
1/2 ounce of hershey's syrup

He also added that you can sugar rim the glass, and put a chocolate swirl of syrup on top of the already stirred drink, but obviously that's optional.

I hope my shows do not disappoint tonight...

Dance Dance Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution is such a great game. I am not a huge fan of video games, but this Playstation 2 game is not your average one. Instead of killing people or trying to avoid cops, this game has tons of songs that you can dance to! There's a mat that you hook up to the console that has squares on it. The sqaures are obviously where you "dance." It tells you what to do (jump, step, etc.) with what foot and there's different difficulty levels. It's also a good workout! I definitely recommend this game :)
Today Matt and I bought our season football tickets for the fall. I can't believe that it'll be my last year being a student and buying football tickets. The school fired it's head coach Frank Solich, the same guy that brought the team to the national championship game in 2002. But the team really fell apart after that so of course they had to boot him. This whole state revolves around that team so it seemed like a good thing to do. Now we have Bill Callahan. He was the former Oakland Raiders coach. I don't really follow football, but hopefully my last year as a student coincides with a good team!
I just wanted to add that Jay Leno is so funny. I try and watch his monologue a couple times a week. Today he said that milk prices were going to go up by $.50 a gallon! And then he said "What, is OPEC raising cows now?" I mean come on that's a good one.
I just played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) hence the "energetic" mood star.

Easter Eggs

Since my exams are behind me, this weekend has been pretty relaxing. I like not having to study all day. My next exams are the first week of May so I'll be studying again at the end of April. Anyway, with the upcoming holiday Matt and I decided to dye some eggs. I haven't dyed eggs since I was a kid so it was fun being a kid again. The egg dying was actually really messy; it's funny how I don't remember that part about the whole egg dying process. Tomorrow we're going to a fancy Sunday brunch at a local hotel. I'm super excited because I looked at the menu and they're going to have everything you could imagine. We have reservations at 2pm so I probably won't eat until then so I can try all of it. Here's a picture of the Easter eggs we dyed. The camera I have actually took a pretty nice picture!

We went to "WindChimes" which is a classier Chinese restaurant. For those familiar with Michigan restaurants, it was like a Szechuan West, but not as classy as P.F. Changs. I ordered shrimp and vegetables. I usually order a chicken dish and get the shrimp at Red Lobster but I thought I'd try something different. Shrimp is supposed to be good for you, but has a lot of cholesterol. That's probably why it tastes really good.
After classes today I watched the "Apprentice." For those of you who don't watch (and are living under a rock!) it's basically a 13-week job interview where Donald Trump eliminates a candidate every week. We were down to the final four and he had to eliminate two people. I was surprised that Nick and Amy did horribly at their interviews. (I would have been surprised if anyone did horribly at this point because we're already left with the four best candidates.) Anyway, Amy and Nick were fired and Kwame and Bill were left. The weird thing is that Omarosa got to come back, among others, to help with the last task. I don't know why they brought her back, she ruins everything. I think it was mostly for ratings since she brings drama to the show.
Tomorrow, I'm going to make snickerdoodles. I think these cookies were probably the first things I've ever made in home living, in 6th grade. They are basically cinnamon-sugar cookies that are VERY good. I think Matt and I may possibly dye eggs tomorrow too, but we'll see if we have time. Our exams are coming up in May, and for Matt that means studying a LOT. I guess that's law school for you!

Vodka-flavored Ice Cream

In Australia, an ice cream company came out with vodka-flavored ice cream. A lot of parents are outraged because it might give children a taste for alcohol. I personally don't know many people who like the taste of vodka, they just like the alcohol no matter what it tastes like. I, myself, don't like the taste. So maybe kids will eat the vodka-flavored ice cream and come to the conclusion that they don't like vodka, haha. If I had kids, I wouldn't buy this flavor, but I don't see a problem with producing it. We have kahlua and bailey's flavored stuff for all ages, which in it's real form does have alcohol; we have rum flavored ice cream, etc. I haven't heard a study that links eating "flavored" food with consumption of alcohol. So it's silly to create an outrage when making vodka-flavored ice cream is perfectly legal.
Sidenote: I'm done with my evil test!!!

Dreaded Exam

I am less than 18 hours away before taking my dreaded exam. I have been studying pretty hard, but I feel like there's always something else I don't know. I've gone through homework problems (with several I still don't know how to solve), gone through my notes, the review sheet, and my book. The hardest thing about this class is that there are so many theorems, and I can't remember all of them!
I called home today and my brother found this recipe for a "jello pie" in the newspaper. So my mom and him are making that. I can't imagine what jello tastes like with a crust. I'm not a big fan of jello so I don't think it would taste that great.
Well I should probably study and take some headache medicine while I'm at it. I decided not to update this journal until AFTER the exam. Wish me luck :)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The subject heading was the movie we saw last night. I was expecting it to be a little weird since it was more of an independent film type movie. It was actually really good. It's about a man played by Jim Carrey (one of my favorite actors) and his girlfriend, played by Kate Winslet, who break up and so then erase each other from their memories. The "procedure" of erasing memories in itself is cool because since it isn't really done in real life, the writers got creative on how it was done and what the patient is thinking while he undergoes the operation. The acting was really good too (Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Wood are in it also) so it's a must-see movie. The title of the movie comes from Alexander Pope's poem Eloisa to Abelard where it goes "How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd." Although others may disagree I believe the movie shows how humans have faults and that is okay; to err is human. To appreciate the good, one must experience the bad. Hmm maybe I should be a movie critic :)
This morning I slept until 11am, and even though that's really 10am with Daylight Savings, I still felt like a bum. So I'm going to be studying non-stop today. After Tuesday my life will be much better.

Waterboy

I forgot how great "The Waterboy" was. Adam Sandler sometimes makes great movies i.e. Happy Gilmore and the Waterboy and sometimes he doesn't i.e. anything else. The DVD was in the clearance section at Wal-Mart so I figured since it was cheap I would get it. One of the funniest characters in the Waterboy is the assistant coach no one understands. He is hilarious and should get some award for best acting portraying a really stupid person. Anyway, I have a long night ahead of me, but thought I could fit in a movie and write about it. :)

Also YEAH for Michigan winning the OTHER basketball tourny!

Studying

This upcoming weekend I'll be married to my books. I have a huge exam on Tuesday for my hardest class, Matrix Theory. We actually got a review sheet in class today with a million problems on it, which was better than last time where we had no idea what was on the test. I think my professor makes the class harder than it's supposed to be. Besides book problems, he assigns problems that don't relate to the class, so we can't refer to our books for help. If I do well again on this next exam, hopefully I'll stop complaining about the class :)
On a more positive note I finally used my Amazon gift certificate. My sister gave me a $25 gift certificate for my birthday in October so I bought the DVD "About a Boy" (so good!) the soundtrack to "Dirty Dancing" (I bought the tape like 10 years ago!) and the book "1984." I always wanted to read that book because I know all about "Big Brother is watching," etc. and it sounds fascinating.
Now I'm going to start studying, blah. I'm sure I'll take multiple breaks and write in this journal again before the weekend is up.