I Survived.

The weekend was phenomenal, plain and simple.

Sure, I wasn't sober for the majority, but I got reasonably drunk, didn't go overboard, and had a good time with everyone. Siri's party at Joe's was great, I had fun getting dressed up and going out. My friends are great and we got Claire drunk, FINALLY. It happened.

My apartment was the hangout for most of it, but that's fine. Its all cleaned up now and no one puked in it which is nice. Sure there were some unexpected things, but hey, that's part of the fun. That, and the fact that there were guests meant that I got to eat at yummy restaurants... Yum, Za's and FlatTop! Soooo delicious.

Of course, despite the fun weekend its back to work this week. Lots of work, actually. I have 50+ sketches to do for my design class for Thursday... A day and a half is not enough for that. I have an Italian speech to prepare for, a quiz on Thursday, midterms are next week and I have studying to do for my pledge education nights at the fraternity, so needless to say I'm a bit frantic right now. I don't recall ever being this busy with school things before and I know its only going to get worse from here so I just have to buckle down and do it.

Its times like these that I wish that I wasn't such a horrible procrastinator.

Preparing for Weekend Madness

There are people coming from out of town this weekend, and I'm super excited. Yes, Claire and Evelyn are coming, hooray!

A friend of mine, Siri, celebrated her 19th birthday last weekend but went home to spend it with her family. 19 is an important birthday here. Why? Because in Champaign, you can get into the bars when you turn 19. So this weekend is dedicated to being absolutely ridiculous in and out of bars. Poor Claire is a novice drinker, has never gotten really drunk before. We're hoping by the end of the weekend she'll be a pro.

I'm in Computer Science again, obviously not paying attention. Some of you may say 'Katie, you should really pay attention in class' and to you I say, simply, 'No'. Its too boring. Only one more class after this and its officially the weekend! I'll be getting lunch with my pledge dad and then finishing some homework and cleaning my apartment in preparation for this glorious weekend.

I'll post again in a few days to detail the aftermath.
Wish me luck! [or at the very least, a mild hangover]

Eight Legged Freaks

So, computer is back, computer is fixed, life is good.

Oh, except for the part where I'm ridiculously busy. I finally finished my design project and after printing it out two separate times, have gotten the colors to print as good as they are going to be. They didn't come out as vibrant as I had hoped but I'm not willing to spend more money to screw with it any more. Of course, after I printed it, I realized that I had forgotten to buy matte board, so crap, tomorrow I have to run and get some in between classes.

My italian professor got mad at us today because apparently we're not learning as fast as she'd hoped and since she sucks she decided to make us list 50 new vocabulary words/verbs we've learned so far this semester and using those words, write 10 phrases. Its frustrating, because me and a few other girls are keeping up just fine but 4 out of 7 basically suck so its getting taken out on all of us. Its a waste of my time since I'm not the one having problems.

Wrote a paper tonight, but at least that was relatively easy. Of course, the catch here is it was supposed to have been turned in on Monday. Oops.

Anyway, in non-academic news there are drunk people shouting outside my window. I swear if they throw anything, I'll kill them. Its a Wednesday night, people, study and go to bed. If it keeps up like this, I will ruin every single party/loud drunk night they have by calling the nonemergency police number and repeatedly filing noise complaints. Maybe that will shut them up.

Also, according to my roommate, there was a gigantic jumping spider in our apartment today. It scared her so badly she ran out of the apartment and went to the neighbors to get them to kill it. None of them were home so she asked one of the maintenance guys to do it. I guess the sheer size of it freaked him out too, but its now dead. I wasn't home when that happened, thank God, but now I keep looking around my room and checking it for spiders before I go to bed. Ugh, ew.

Alright, one last bug patrol and I'm off to bed.
Buona notte.

[Since I'm all Italian'd up now.]

Still Without Internet.

It sucks how much we depend on computers nowadays.

I've been without internet at my apartment for a grand total of 5 days and its driving me nuts. Its annoying to have to trek to a campus wireless area every time I have to check my e-mail, which nowadays is pretty often. I get emails from TAs, clubs, the fraternity that I'm now a pledge of (Alpha Rho Chi, the professional art & architecture co ed frat), and various other people and places.

I have assignments that I have to do online as well and its difficult to find a quiet place on campus to get them done. That's what my apartment is for. My roommate and I have totally different schedules [or one of us is usually napping] so the apartment is usually pretty quiet. That's why I like getting all my work done there. I'm getting a part of my laptop replaced on Friday [really glad I went with the extended warranty on this one] and today I'm having another part replaced, so I guess I'll see if they have any other temporary solutions.

Everything is online these days, whyyy? Its usually convenient, thats why, but once it stops working, you're screwed. Damn.

In other news, my cold is almost gone, yay. My roommate still sounds awful, though. We're both sleeping all the time, its pathetic.

Oh awesome, and now I've just remembered that they are sealing our countertops today so its going to smell awful when I get home. Ewwwww, noooooooo! :(

Well, I guess that gives me incentive to stay out here and do work instead of going home to a crappy smelling aparment. The semester is almost 1/3 done now, wow! Time flies, even though I've only been in class for like a month... Oh well, that just means I'm that much closer to catching a break, yes! Theres one thing I miss about high school... occasionally, we'd get a day off. I miss institute days!!! The only day I had off this semester already passed and that was labor day. I remember back in middle school there was always that question of whether or not we'd get columbus day off. No questions in college, we don't get it off, haha, no way!

And here I thought that it was good when things were certain. Pffft.

Someday, it will all work.

So, one of these days I'm convinced that everything in my apartment is going to be up and running. Of course, right now if its not one thing, its another but I'm convinced that once everything is done, it will all work.

Of course, now my laptop is being a royal piece of crap and the internet refuses to work with the apartment's ethernet, but I guess I'm not the only one. My neighbors are having trouble and my roommate's went down yesterday. Still I'm convinced that there's also a problem with my computer so I'm taking it in to the Apple store on Green St. today and hopefully they can fix it, otherwise screw it I'm getting a wireless router a la my brother's suggestion and since he's all computer savvy I'm gonna go ahead and trust him.

So where am I writing from today? I'm in my computer science lab. Obviously I don't like computer science so I'm not going to be paying any attention whatsoever and we're in a computer lab, so bonus.

Anyway, speaking of my neighbor's, they really are ruiners of plans. Honestly. Last night I had it all planned out that I was going to stay in, get caught up on cleaning in my apartment and do some laundry. I was ironing and watching 'When Harry Met Sally' and as usual they come knockin on my door and tell me I have five minutes to get ready because we're going to Joe's. So I went. Whatever. I'm never going to get over this cold if I continue to go out and scream at bars but it was a good time.. and they're 21 so they get me drinks and because I was the only girl with them that night and we knew the guy at the door, no cover and they bought all my drinks.

Despite the bar being fun, the best part was afterwards when we got back to their apartment. We stopped by my place and rounded up my roommate and ordered a pizza and went back to their place to wait for that. I finally got my cup back that had been there for like 2 weeks and for some reason, the boys wanted to watch Noggin. What was on Noggin? Gullah Gullah Island. Anyone remember that? I swear to god I've never seen a group of 19-21 year old guys go more apeshit over ANYTHING. It was hysterical. Then they started singing all the theme songs from all these old shows, like Arthur and stuff and named off all the teams from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Wow. Those are my only words.

Now, I'm going to go and pretend like I care about computer science and pay a little bit of attention... maybe.

Mamma Mia!

Current Score:
Italian - 1
Katie - 0

Every time I ran through it at home, my speech was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it was passable for the first 3-5 minute speech I've ever done completely in a foreign language. So going into class on Monday I was pretty confident. I was the last to go in our class of 7, so I had all class to run through it in my head.

Got up there and got as far as:
"Ciao, mi chiamo Katie e parleró della geografia fisica della regione di Calabria"
[Hi, my name is Katie and I will be talking about the physical geography of the region of Calabria.]

(^ See that? Thats your Italian lesson for today, haha.)

Then I blanked out, haha. Whoops! The rest of it was just a stringing together of random phrases that was kind of about geography. Oh well. At least I wasn't the worst. One poor girl got asked to re-do her speech the next day.

In other news, I'm going through one of my headache marathons again. It happens every once in awhile where I'll have had no migranes for awhile and then all of the sudden BAM. So, I had a good two months, one here or there but this week? I've had three in the past two days. One yesterday morning, one this morning, and one this evening. Soooo uncomfortable. That and they make me tired. As long as I have no repeats of my ER visit last year, we'll be good.

Now I'm going to stay up nice and late because I'm hyped up from headache medicine.

Drip, Drip, Drop Little April Shower

Beating a tune as you fall all around.

Bambi, anyone?

This morning I woke up to some dripping and dropping. The remnants of Hurricane Ike had arrived bringing with it torrential rain and pretty high winds. At 8 in the morning, I was tired and didn't think anything of it and rolled over and went back to sleep. I woke up again around 10 and decided it was probably a good idea to get up. As I came into the living area.. I knew something wasn't right. I knew how rain sounded so I started to check around. Sure enough, my ceiling was leaking in the corner, so I wiped up the water that had accumulated and stuck a pot under the drip.

But wait, there's more!

Not only that, but in the fourth bedroom, which is vacant, there were two more leaks, both much worse. The carpet in the room was saturated and it was just bad. I stuck bins under those leaks and found a fan to turn on to try to dry out the carpet. I called maintenance and talked to some snooty woman who said she'd tell the workers but they couldn't do anything until the rain stopped. So now, three hours later, its stopped raining for awhile but still no maintenance men. I guess they're busy working on other stuff, so its no big deal. Since its stopped raining its not dripping nearly as much so I'm not too worried anymore.

Nasty cold + Leaky roof = A very annoyed Katie.

But hey, what happens happens. Gotta count my blessings, at least no one peed off the balcony last night. At least, not that I noticed. So I guess that's a good thing.. and I only got one knock on the door. So after a hectic morning its time for more work. A small paper and a speech in Italian paired with some laundry and I need to wash the dishes. I should probably vacuum too.. maybe break out the swiffer. Aren't I just Susie homemaker?

You Know its the Weekend When...

Let me describe to you the joys of living in an apartment complex of mostly men. The corner of my apartment has floor to ceiling windows. There's an outdoor walkway connected to one side of that and when they all inevitably get drunk on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday [and other various days of the week], they like to mosey on down the walkway and pee off the balcony while I'm sitting watching what not to wear and baking cookies. Needless to say, I got more than one eyeful last night. The funny thing is, is that after they're done, they come to my door and ask me if I saw them and then apologize and tell me to come out and party with them.

I'm obviously not adverse to partying [example: Last weekend when I was carried out unconscious from my neighbor's apartment because I'd had waaay too many shots], but they convinced me to go to the bars on Thursday night, and now I'm tired and I am currently a little bit bitter about the partying scene. Two nights ago, after I'd gone to bed my roommate came home and turned on the hall light. Result? The guys in the apartment complex behind us who were partying on their balcony saw her through her bedroom window, threw a paint can and broke the window. Needless to say she called the cops on their asses and they have a nice police report filed against them and we have a shiny new window. Looove it.

So anyway, I now have a raging cold. I spent all of today laying on the couch and watching movies. Well, at least its a good weekend to be sick. I mean, really, its been raining a shit ton, so I wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway. Woo hoo! Heres to hoping I don't get more balcony guests tonight peeing and banging on my windows.

College Living... Don't be Jealous.

So I'd like to start this off by saying hey, whats up, this is my blog. I'm Katie, a sophomore at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. That's all you really get to know. Well, ok, I'm an art major. There, nothing else.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet for now, I mean, class is starting relatively soon so I can't babble on and on about whats going on in my life right now. So I guess... I guess I'll start off with a story about how apartment living was, in one fell swoop, reduced to the level of dorm living last night. Now, I like my roommate fine, she's a nice girl, but our doors do not block as much sound as the realtors said they do. In fact, I'm pretty sure they amplify sound.

Now, I'd gone to bed at a reasonable time for me, around 12:30am. I had a 9am class in the morning so I figured it would be a good idea to take some medicine and sleep in an effort to fend off the cold that was starting to emerge. Seriously, I have the immune system of an infant. 3 weeks of class and I'm already sniffling and have a sore throat, its pathetic. My roommate was out at the bars as she doesn't have class early on Wednesday and whatever, that's fine, its her deal and its not like we share a room so I figured she wouldn't wake me up when she came home.

Oh boy, was I ever wrong.

She came in around 2:30am, talking to some guy. Neither was obnoxiously drunk, but they were definitely not sober. She wasn't being loud, but for some reason it woke me up. I guess my spidey sense that someone was about to come annoy me was tingling and woke me up to prepare me for what was about to happen. When I heard her say his name, I realized that it was our neighbor, whose apartment I had gotten embarrassingly drunk in and passed out in the previous weekened. Obviously, that meant we were BFFs, even though I don't remember a whole lot [though I soon found out he was the Big Black to my Rob]. I guess he'd been worried about me after I had been carried out of his apartment on Saturday and wanted to come and see me.

It was like slow motion. I could hear them walking to my room, he wondering if the closed door was mine and she saying that it was, but it might be locked. Well, it wasn't locked. Hearing the handle turn, I made a last ditch effort to pretend that I was still asleep so that they'd leave me alone. I mean, they weren't that drunk, right? Wrong. They started calling my name, my lights were flipped on and I was repeatedly tapped on the head with a bright orange frisbee that he'd picked up from my floor. Annoyed, I finally got up. My roommate informed me that she'd brought my Big Black to me and he expressed his happiness that I survived the weekend after passing out in his bathroom, then proceeded to ask me if I wanted to go play beer pong at his place that very second. Um, no, I don't. Its Tuesday night at 2:30 in the morning.

He pressed the invitation for a few minutes before giving up, petting my hair awkwardly and telling me to come to his place on Friday to party.

And then he took my frisbee.