Google Trends

This kind of stuff always peaks my interest.

Harry Potter reaps 5.2 times the number of searches as Lord of the Rings.

People search for "free movie" 17 times more often than "buy tickets".

Paris Hilton is 12.5 times more popular than Nicole Richie.

Katrina still gets 1.5 times more searches than Haiti.

3 times as many people searched for "physics help" than "biology help" and 1.36 times as many needed help with  chemistry than with physics.

Peace Corps is most often searched for in Washington DC, followed by Madison WI and Portland OR.

Mmm New Dorm Smell

Ok besides being ridiculously tired, I'm very happy with my new dorm. It's big and spacious and fantastic. My only real problem is not enough storage. But I've got it covered. I'm next door to the science buildings, just up the hill from the band hall, and right around the corner from Strom. Perfect! I have a beautiful view of the stadium from not 1, but 2 windows (which have curtains now btw). My roommate is supposedly moving in wednesday. And thursday the cafeteria downstairs will be open. Yes! Life is good.

New director smell, not so good. Verdict is still out with me. He is much more, um, intense, than say Brozak. He really wants us to be the best band in the SEC, which of course we will be, but that's besides the point. I can tell band is going to be a lot more work this year, I'm just hoping that he also makes band a lot more fun this year too. He seems like a very serious guy, and I'm hoping he loosens up just a little bit after band camp. I don't know; we'll see.

Our first show, for those who are interested, will be Dave Mathews Band (and yes we're playing Ants Marching). The music is killer.

Back to School

Today is my last day at home. Phooey. I have to go back to actually doing something every day. I'm almost done packing. Just a few more things that have to get stuffed in. How I don't know, but I should be able to get it. It'll be so good to be back on campus and see everybody again. It feels like it's been ages since I've seen anybody. Tomorrow we have to leave really really really early in the morning so we can get to the dorm when it opens. I'm sure a bunch of people are going to move-in today despite the fact that housing says we can't, but I'd rather not risk it. It's not that big a deal. Ok, I better go finish packing...:(.

Vacuuming and other such things

When I was in tenth grade, one of my very best guy friends and I were in the same french class (we've actually always been in the same french class prior to college but back to the story). Anyway, our teacher always went down the rows every monday asking what we did over the weekend. Johnny's answer was always cleaning. "I cleaned the bathroom" "I vacuumed the second floor" "I cleaned out the basement" "I cleaned out the garage". No really. Every time. It was always a big class joke. Now the joke's over. I have spent most of today cleaning.

I vacuumed the basement. I swiffered the first floor. Not that you can tell, Calbert took care of that pretty quickly, but at least now there's less fur-bunnies rolling around. I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. And I'm about to go bathe the dog, which I'm sure will make him uber happy with me.

Oh and I killed three spiders in the basement. I should have a parade.

Home Sweet Home

Home is a wonderful place to be. Annelise and I chilled out and talked and caught up. I talked to Steph for just shy of 2 hours on Skype. Savannah and I went swimming and then out to eat (cool Italian place called Figo).

Yesterday Meredith and I watched Mamma Mia on Sing-Along-Mode. And yes, we sang along.

I have Giradelli (spelling?) fudgy brownies cooling while my giant puppydog stares gloomily in the direction of the kitchen. (He doesn't dare try anything with Dad home).

Oh and I have been mildly productive. I made my bed today. And I did laundry. Boo-yah.

Night at the Museum 2

Just got back from seeing night at the museum 2. overall pretty good. about on par with the first one. had a lot of clever stuff in it. good for the kids and the history buffs. (I sort of fall into both categories). enjoyable, especially if you've seen the first one. probably less so if you haven't. anyway pretty good. anyway, I'd give it a B. didn't see any good previews...

Jackie's Garden

Today my mom and I went to lowe's to get flowers for this one flowerbed in our backyard.

I have a thing about flowers. I don't like plants that are just green. I want things that have big fabulous flowers all over the place. I also like semi-unusual looking flowers, which tend to be annuals (one year only), whereas my mom only wants perennials (the kind that come back every year) for obvious reasons. So everytime I go to lowe's to help pick flowers, I end up going "ooh, look at that one! Let's get one of those!" or "hey those are cool! let's get them!" and the answer is always "but those are annuals". Phooey! BUT...I managed to find the only cool looking ones so those are what we got. So we're calling the flowerbed mine even though it's not my flowerbed, and I didn't buy the flowers. But I'm not complaining. So here's Jackie's Garden:

Back row: Foxy (a Foxglove), Yellow Yarrow, Apricot Yarrow, Herman (Heliot Coreopsis), Vince (the verbena) Middle Row: Chilean Avens, unidentified herb, Jenny (the Queen Victoria Lobelia) Bottom Row: the mini-rose, Flora (a flower we lost the tab for), John (a blanket flower), Betty (giant pink daisy), Joe (another blanket flower), and the daylily.

I just had to name some of them. I mean, who really wants to be called a Queen Victoria Lobelia?

Foxy is my favorite:

But I really like the pink daisy too:

When I go to the Zoo

You remember my blog-post-ideas blog post? Well I've decided to go ahead and write one of them out. Namely the "When you go to the zoo, what animals do you absolutely have to see?" (#7) idea. Grab your safari hats because here we go!

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I have not been to the zoo in a long time, but I have been to a lot of nice zoos. Among my favorites are the Indianapolis Zoo, which has a lovely polar bear exhibit (or at least it did the last time I was there), the St. Louis Zoo, and Zoo Atlanta, which has a very nice panda exhibit. Overall, the zoo is not among my absolute favorite places to go. It tends to be overcrowded, with lots of completely uncontrolled small screaming children, overpriced, and it smells bad. However, I love seeing the animals. They make it all worth it. Especially if you are at your leisure to see them as you please, and not hurried along by a teacher with a field trip schedule to stick to.

Tigers (and big cats in general) are a must-see for me. I love their powerful grace and austere beauty. Feeding time is optimal. Basically, they're my favs.

Elephants are the bomb too. You gotta respect the ears.

Pandas are just great. Zoo Atlanta is pretty special in that it has pandas at all, and we were super ridiculously lucky when last year one of the females had a baby. Very rare. The baby is called Mei Lan. Isn't she cute?

I have a strange fascination with the platypus, so if a zoo has them, I will go see them.

So that's what I would go see at the zoo. What are your must-see animals?

Thoughts as the Year Winds Down

We only have a week and a half left (well I do- my last final is at 2 on the last day) and I can't believe it. Where did the year go? I just can't get my head around it.

You remember in elementary school when your teacher starting taking down posters and bulletin boards and stuff two weeks before the end and suddenly your classroom, your whole school just didn't feel the same? It's like that around here too. All lofts have to be down before reading day so everybody's dismantling this weekend. Sam's went down a couple days ago and the room feels totally different.

I cleaned the junk out of my desk drawers and took the stuff off my bulletin board so it feels oddly empty. I need to start going through my binders and stuff soon too so packing will be easier.

Next weekend will be worse because the campus itself will start to empty out. Most of my friends have finals on the last day as well, so they'll be here but everything else will be pretty bare.

Anyhow, it's a beautiful day outside and I need to focus on calculus...

Blustery Day

It's so windy!!! Hair in my face, pollen swirling, blustery day. Yuck. 

There really isn't much going on today. Going to go talk to my lab TA in a few minutes. She said I could come by today and get my grade since I couldn't go Friday. Tomorrow I get to go to a student panel interview of one of the three candidates for marching band director. Should be interesting. I wasn't thrilled by the last one so I'm hoping this guy is better. Then I have a scholar meeting. woohoo. 

French final on friday. maxcy banquet on sunday. french awards reception on monday. I think that's it but I feel like I'm forgetting something...

Oh well. That was really it. I don't have much to say today. I'll try to think of something cool and interesting for tomorrow. 

I'm On Google!

I'm on google! Yes! It is not exactly super duper easy to become searched by google; I had to work with it a bit to get it to crawl my page. But now when you search my name I'm #4 on the main page, and if you search Google Blogsearch for me, I'm THE FIRST entry that comes up. Sweet.

I'm also searchable by Yahoo, Ask.com, and WikiSearch. Woohoo!

So Many Things Have Been Left Unsaid

So for those of you who don't know, I volunteered at Scholar's Day this past weekend. I started out as just a student display for ALD (hence the tri-fold) but then my band director found out my topic was marching band and basketball pep band...let's just say it was highly recommended that I go as the band representative. Yikes! Nobody believed me when I tried to explain how much stuff I would have. That giant screen/poster/display thing behind me is HUGE and it was not nearly as easy to put together as the director said it would be...Some dad was milling around because he was early and he had to help me. It was a really fun day though, and I was wearing really cute heels (which hurt ALOT at the end of the day).

Other big news: I have my computer back! Yes! And best of all, I didn't lose anything. Nothing. Every document, every picture, every song, every program was right there waiting for me. It was like nothing had ever happened. I know, I'm currently holding the record for Luckiest Person Ever.

So that was yesterday. Oh and I got mail yesterday too. Isn't life great?

This is a Post

I've had a lovely day overall. It was really really ridiculously windy today, but it was also sunny. I didn't get any mail today, but that's ok. I spent several hours today reading, one of my favorite hobbies and completely lost track of time. Wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Not very productive, but extremely enjoyable. My mom has not yet received my computer, but it probably only shipped today. I expect it to arrive on wednesday. I've been eating waaaay too many peanut butter sandwiches lately but it doesn't seem to be having an effect.

Hm. That's pretty much all I've got. Enjoy your monday night.

An Update on the Computer Situation

I got a call from Dell two days ago letting me know that "the.re-pairs.on.your.lap-top-com-put-er.are.com-plete." So hopefully I'll have it back soon. My poor baby...it's had such a hard time...

But I sort of had a little bit of a revelation about the whole thing. I often remind myself and others, that if we start to really go off the path of righteousness, God is still 100% capable of smiting us down. If we start getting too cocky, God can still put us back in our places. Easily.

My little revelation this morning, and I must insist on calling it a 'revelation' because it really truly wasn't tied to anything else I was thinking about at the time, and was really rather pithy too.

God doesn't need lightening bolts to smite people.

Smiting could for example, come in the form of a cup of water.

SO I'm officially going to church on Easter Sunday, for absolute sure.

Underconstruction

Please excuse my mess! I'm doing some overhauling on my blog and it will return to a semi-normal state within a day or two. Thanks!

Some Other Bloggy Froggies

Good evening dear readers! For those of you who have never looked on the right side of my blog, there is a list there of the blogs I read. I would like to take a moment, as did Stephen (Life at Carolina) to identify some of my fellow USC bloggers.

Stephen: the technical genius behind Life at Carolina, who knows far more about HTML and RSS stuff than I will ever even attempt to understand. His blog is as his title suggests all about his life at USC. With blog categories ranging from "Pensive/Reflective" to "Stephen Stories", his posts are sure to keep you thinking. He was also the first of the UTF residents to put out a blog.

Cameron: his blog Closing Time came not long after my own. His tagline "What goes on inside Cameron's head?" truly says it all. With a rambling free thought style, he brings you stories of the day with a quirky twist. If you're looking for a fun, lighthearded blog post, let Cameron be your guide.

Sam: aka my roomie, and you can find her at August Every Month. Sam is well-known as the creative, artsy-craftsy person on the hall. She is also the resident expert on Photoshop. Great pictures + fun photoshop effects = one great picture blog. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Definitely a must-see.

Nick: He's the newest member of our little blog community, so go show some support over at Nick at Nite. He's so new, we don't even know what his style is yet. Knowing Nick, his blogs are sure to be fun, interesting, and down-to-earth perspectives on anything and everything.

So there you go! The whole little bloggy circle!

Hoping you have as much fun reading their posts as I do from the desk of

Jackie

Big Shoes to Fill

Tonight I went to the McNair Scholar Dinner. I have a large scholarship at USC, and so they throw a big dinner for us in the spring to honor the seniors. Mr. and Mrs. McNair, the people who fund the scholarship, came too. It was such an honor to even be in the same room as them.

The food was delicious, everyone looked gorgeous, and the people at my table were wonderful. The president of the university was there, as well as the provost, and they both spoke. One of the seniors also gave a speech. Everything was just delightful.

After the meal, they introduced all the seniors, told us their major, and told us their plans for after graduation. These are some of the most accomplished people you will ever meet. I was flabbergasted. Some of course were going on to medical school or law school or graduate school. They all had marvelous plans to become these amazing things. Some were going on to unbelievable adventures. One girl is moving to Danali park in Alaska for a few monthes. One girl, who's graduating early, is going to start her own business. Another is going to be a scuba instructor in the Caribbean before going into work involving the education and interfield relations around marine science issues. And one guy, I could hardly believe this, did his senior thesis around traveling from China to Paris on a motorcycle, by himself over the summer, and now he's going to move to China and invest in a chicken farm. After he makes a ton of money (because Chinese agriculture is going to boom in the next 5 years) he's going to buy a motorcycle and explore the Chinese countryside.

The whole time I kept thinking to myself, what will I say? where will I be going? What will Jan proudly explain to the room about me? I'm hoping there will be slightly more to say than, this is Jackie, she's a chemistry major, and she's going to graduate school somewhere.

Just Something to Entertain the Masses

This was done by a fellow blogger, Willow of Life at Willow Manor, and I thought I'd do the same. 

Some "music albums" for you to check out. 

PS. None of these are real albums. These bands do not exist. The pictures are done by going on Flickr and choosing a random picture off the Explore Last Seven Days thing. Then you get a Band name by going to Wikipedia and asking for a random title. The album title is done by going for a random quote on quotations page, and then taking the last phrase of the first quote listed. Voila! Now you too can share random music albums with your friends!

March Madness!!!!!!

It's March! It's March Madness! OMG!!!

ok, I just had to get that out of my system. I love basketball. You'll notice the new Selection Sunday countdown widget is prominantly displayed.

Random fact: Less than 1% of adults worldwide have a college degree. Thinking about it, I'm like yeah I understand that. That makes sense. At the same time, it's like whoa in four years I'll be in the top 1% of education attainment. Sort of makes you feel special.

Gave tours of maxcy today. I could go on and on and on about mcnair weekend and how much I love it and how much I love volunteering for it, and how much I want to do it next year. But I won't bore you.

piano is going well, practicing 30 minutes a day right now. I don't know enough at this point to do much more than that. Will hopefully be moving on to lesson 2 on monday or tuesday.

Inspired

I have decided to teach myself to play the piano. I've always wanted to play. I love listening to piano music and I've always envied people who could play. I don't think it ever occurred to my parents to have me learn it.

My grandmother had a piano when I was younger, but I don't ever remember her playing it much. She offered to give it to my mom when she decided to get rid of it, but we lived out of state so there was the problem of transporting it, and then where would we put it, and would any of us ever play it, etc etc. So she sold the piano to some acquantaince of hers. The lack of access to a piano has been my most major stopping point.

At some point Meredith got a small (cheap) keyboard, which would have been good enough to learn on, but Mere and I have never been big on sharing with each other and it didn't really occur to me to teach myself at the time.

I have a few advantages going into this undertaking. I have almost abnormally long, thin fingers for a person of my size. As in, during geometry when we did a project on the proportionality of the human body, the proportions of my fingers/hands were ridiculously off, to the point that we re-measured them. Also, in sixth grade when we were all picking instruments, my band director begged me to play the bassoon because I was one of the few kids whose fingers were long enough to reach all the keys. (This did not happen because a) I hate the bassoon and b) my mom forbade me from playing any instrument larger than I was).

I also have a strong background in music. I've been playing saxophone for 8 years now (omg) and have had courses in music theory. I'm not terribly good with chords, which will be an issue, but we'll cross that bridge later. Not having to teach myself to read music is a huge advantage because it's not easy to teach music theory to yourself. If you already know what a key is, how to read notes, rhythms, and the basics, you can learn an instrument much more quickly. It's like if you speak english, and were going to learn a new language, it would be a lot easier for you to learn French than Russian because at least with French you would already know the alphabet.

There is of course the problem of me being 19. Most people start piano as kids. Most people also have a teacher and take lessons. I am teaching myself in my spare time.

But I really really really really want to play piano, so I went to the library today and checked out three beginner piano books (Modern Method for Keyboard: Volume 1, Recital Classics for Beginner Level Players, and the Hannah-Barbara Songbook). The first book is my lesson book. It's what's actually teaching me to play. I did lesson one and two today because lesson one is like "this is a whole note". There was no playing involved so I skipped it. I think I'll stay on lesson two for a few days until I can do it all without making any mistakes. The other two books are pieces that I can practice with, once I learn a little more. I think after lesson two I should be able to do the easier pieces. I'm so excited about the Hannah-Barbara book: all the best cartoon theme songs, including Flinstones, Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, and Johnny Quest. That book's significantly harder though so those may take some time.

But, wait, you say! You spent all that time saying you just never had access to a piano! Where did you get a piano? Well I have this wonderful thing called a roommate. Sam brought her keyboard from home (much better than Mere's) and we keep it beneath the futon. So I have that for everyday practice. There's also a keyboard in the common room, but I don't want to embarrass myself so I'm only going to use that as necessary. And if I feel like walking down to the music hall, there's a gazillion practice rooms in the basement.

So there you have it. I'm going to learn to play the piano.