We look like the best of friends - truth is, we don't even know each other. Way to be doneskies all weekend everyone!  

Yeah... there was an argyle pong table. No surprise. 

Nina and Pete who "is easy" - ha ha. Jokes jokes.  

I think we look really really cute.

Me and Marcie! :) Marcie and I.  

we're cool. you love us. 

They are so cute. It hurts.  

We met Miles in line for the bathroom. Turns out he lives like 10 minutes form me back home. SMALL WORLD!  

Nerd Alert!

So I was studying in Torg Bridge this morning becuase I severely wanted to rock my Chem Lab and Chem Lecture tests like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, I'm going over my notes and sort of outlining them and when I finished I needed a stapler so I went into the library (you know cuz Torg is convienantly connected to it) and it was kind of embarassing becuase the librarian there was the one that I had help me look up some things earlier this week and she goes... "Hey, how's it going? How did your Animal Behavior paper come out?" As if that's not embarassing enough... we're on a first name basis now which tells me I have spent WAY to much time at the library this week. And sadly, this week was the first time I stepped foot in my library this year. We have this cool system called ILLiad where they can just scan the pages in books that you need and convert it into a PDF file and just send it to you via e-mail all within 24 hours. I love this system, it makes life infinately more awesome because 6 floors of stacks is practically impossible to sort through especially when each floor is the size of two department stores. Anyway, because of this I haven't left my room to library it up this year until now... Ugh my cool streak is done. over. gone. Anyway, that's all for now... I've spent my whole day taking quizzes and tests (I wish I were lying) so I think it's time I go outside and enjoy this weather or something to that effect. Heather and I are Bollo's-ing it up tonight for some more studying. I haven't even packed for Foxfield yet...

Today was free cone day at Ben & Jerrys

End post.

Kidding. Free cone day - best idea ever. Since there is no need to explain how awesome the event itself was, I'll move on to the next topic which is... (insert crappy drumroll) I finished my safety research project. I'm pretty excited. I went to the cycling club meeting and for the most part they all participated. I was really excited, they are a great bunch of people and they welcomed me with open arms and were really enthusiastic about helping with this. So, I collected good data, and I'm happy about that. I'm glad I could participate in one of Dr.Gellar's studies - that's huge! :)

In other news, I've been kind of obsessing over Gnarls Barkley lately and I'll have to admit - I do like Cee Lo. Anyway, moving along with other music related news, Dylan talked to John Vanderslice (immediately sky rocketing his street cred) on his radio show last Sunday and you can download the show in it's entirety by going to Dylan's website, The Jolly Holiday and clicking on "radio" and the page will explain what you have to do to listen to this previous broadcast and all that good stuff. I have also been listening to a lot of OK Go, specifically the song "A million ways" - The music video for this is hilarious and it only cost them $25 to make proving that you don't need platnium and diamond encrusted mouth guards (cough Nelly cough) in your music videos for them to be good.

I'm going to Foxfield this weekend in Charlottesville and staying with some friends at UVa so I'm pretty excited about that because what is more fun than steeplechase horse races? - Nothing. Dressing up will also be fun - I haven't in awhile and I feel like being really girly for a day. I also planning at stopping by the Tea Bazaar while in Charlottesville. I haven't been there in awhile because I obviously haven't been to Charlottesville lately but I cannot wait to reunite with this place. A friend of mine introduced it to me a year or so ago and I'm kind of hooked and I've been waiting to go back for so long and finally I'll have the chance to so I'm completely excited about this.

I guess that's all for now, I've been pretty busy lately and will probably be spending the remainder of my life this week in Bollo's. Alex is working Wed and Thurs so I promised to go in and visit. Plus, I will be forced to be productive.

A typical conversation with Matt
(Drew is going to get so sick of us next year)

Matt: youve had that away message for the past 3 nights

Auto response from Me: I found you
the way your foot finds your other arch
when you dream on your stomach.

- d. brown

Matt: whats the dilly
Me: there is no dilly
Me: just some derrick brown i've been reading
Matt: lies and propoganda
Me: what's up with all this speculation and away message stalking
Matt: meh im bored
Matt: i get wild ideas when im bored
Me: yeah i'm in love with derrick brown stuff
Me: i know i'm a weirdo
Me: but it's so good
Me: it's like chicken soup for a stone cold heart
Matt: lol
Matt: i should read it
Me: you really should, it's great- we'll have it at the house next eyar
Me: he even signed it
Matt: score
Me: it says, "i hope this charges your eyes at night and your mouth in the company of lovers"
Me: um thanks derrick brown. - it's perfect

- completely irrelavant part of conversation deleted -
... it gets really Dr. Phil - ish right about now

Matt: i like chicks that dont like me back
Me: i like boys that don't exist!
Matt: you cant make up your mind on what boys you like
Me: no, i know who i like - i'm just very specific and i don't ever want to just settle.
Matt: its a shame
Matt: i hate girls like you

THE USUAL. Ha, this is going to go on all the time next year. Brace yourself Drew, you will hate our girl talk. :P

Turning up the pressure...

The Heat is on

I'm pretty good under pressure. I find myself to be a pretty organized person. Not so much when it comes to organizing my things. But when it comes to doing work and organizing all my work, I will flip out if I do not have it done AT LEAST before the week it is due (ex: final papers). Anyway, I have a paper I'm supposed to turn in on Tursday (which in my life means it should have been done this weekend) and it's not done yet. Therefore, I am flipping out. It's been really hard finding emperical evidence for this topic which is annoying because this is all my own doing seeing as I made up this topic and got it approved. The topic is "animal instinct for disaster" - i figured it wouldn't be impossible to find emperical evidence but alas... i've found two good sources after spending hours seraching our databases. :( I need four. I've written half my paper with what I have, I just need to fill it in with TWO more articles so I've set a deadline for myself. This needs to be done at 3:30pm tomorrow. My classes end at 12:15 so I can go grab a quick lunch and live in the library for a few hours and crank this sucker out. Then study for the 3 tests, and quiz that I have on Thursday. My life is grand! I've never had 3 tests overlap before ever. One is a lab final so hopefully that won't be ridiculous, but we'll have to see. I've actually surprisingly done well in lab this semester so I'm pretty happy about that. I know I sound like the craziest academic obsessed person in the world, but I assure you I am not a loser all the time. Crunch time is here and it's moving full force. After Thursday, I should be able to breathe but since I am making a bad life choice by going to UVA for the weekend for the annual Steeplechace horse races... I won't be able to do all my work, plus I have inductions into AED on Sunday when I get back so that will take up most of my night... So I guess this Thursday will be spent nerding it up in a corner of Bollo's while appearing extremely sketchy as my social life expontentially declines. I feel that this is only going to get worse next year, but... for a good cause. Med school applications = the light at the end of my tunnel. Just another exciting endeavor that is in the works for this little one.

Anyway enough ranting - I promise I will post better things in the near future.

This is how I feel about TheFacebook...

First off, you know facebook is getting ridiculous when people devote an entire entry to it. I don't know if anyone has noticed lately, but there are these stupid away message things that you can put up. As if you actually cared about how much D-bag dave was drinking, don't worry, with this new away message feature of sorts, he'll tell you. And he'll write in gramatically incorrect and broken english and spell things wrong so you can know exactly how "wasted" he is. Jerk, he's probably sitting in his room on the phone with his mom who is reminding him to take one of his flinstone vitamins. Loser. Secondly, as of today Mark Zuckerberg has decided to lump all your friends together in one big happy family. I'm not gonna lie. I don't like that. I liked having friends separated by school - it was much easier. I mean this is like saying you and your 300 friends all attend the University of College. Clearly, some people like their University more than others so why lump everyone together in one big homogenous group of neg? (Yes, I know, that was a terrible sentence but the ridiculousness of the situation annoys me so much I can't even compose sentences in my head). Anyway, that concludes my bitching for the day.

I <3 Earth Day!!
On April 20th we celebrated Earth Day (early) on the drillfield! It's one of my favorite celebrations in the spring. Everyone has their tents out and the Environmental Coalition does a really good job organizing this. We have all sorts of merchants and people with really cool displays come in. We had people who brought their cars that ran on vegetable oil. With the gas prices sky rocketing, it was a focal point of the fair. And I know you guys are saying, wow, Mary we all know you hate nature - and well, yes, I am not a huge fan of the wilderness and I could never be paid enough to go camping. However, I am really concerned about ozone layer depletion and global warming. And I think that we really do need to pay more attention to these things. In World Regions, Boyer had a great slide about what would happen to the world and how long our resources would last if there wern't countries with people living below the poverty rate. I think that we should do this more often. It's going to be a problem in the semi-near future and our families (younger siblings, cousins, kids) will have to deal with this in their lifetime if we don't do something about this now. I mean I know my little blog entry isn't going to do much to change how everybody behaves but hopefully it at least gets you thinking about how much you consume.

On a semi-related note. The Earth Day Shirts this year were bang'n yet again. I mean I have to say I was a huge fan of the Giving Tree shirts of last year but I really like these ones too. And of course in true earth day style, they were made in the US and they're sweatshop free! (Pictured above)

You would never guess

A grad student teaches my Criminology class and it is quite possibly one of my favorite classes this semester. She is a warm, bubbly, caring, and infectious person. Completely, normal, just like you and I – comes from a good background. Today we learned that she was a victim of domestic violence. Obviously, we were completely shocked. Why anyone would ever want to physically hurt such an understanding, caring, and beautiful woman is completely beyond me, but the reality is that it happens all the time, to our friends, and to the people around us. Her story made me so angry. She is a smart professional woman, and I guess I blame the media for stereotyping, but you would never guess that a woman like this would ever be a victim of this type of crime. You always think of people of lower socioeconomic backgrounds and it just didn't make sense. We had always wondered why she wasn't married yet - but it turns out she got married when she was 24 to a seemingly nice guy and over time he became really jealous and would emotionally abuse her and accuse her of adultery etc etc... anyway I guess you could say she was never really happy when she was with him, but because her family is Catholic, I can understand why she would try to keep things going and try to stick it out. Divorce is frowned upon in Catholic families. Anyway, one day they were having a heated argument and he ended up picking her up and throwing her outside and that was the first and last time he would ever lay a hand on her. She got help that day and promised herself never to go back. That day, he also fled. Hearing this was so completely surreal, on the surface you would never know that something this traumatic happened to her. She was married to the guy for 4 years and it has since been 7 years since this whole ordeal ended. I see her in a new light now and I'm so glad she shared her story. It takes a really brave person to speak up and inform her class and let them in on something so personal. The mood in the class today is one I can't explain - everyone could just feel her pain; she was shaking as she told us. I've learned a lot from this experience to say the least... I don't like to date, but I guess when I finally get over myself and join the rest of the college kids, I will be very cautious of the warning signs. And I'm not saying I'm going to think that every guy I meet will beat me or anything, I guess I will just pay more attention. It happens to so many women and they don't report it because of a strong religious background, or because they think they can make it work, etc. The bottom line is that it's wrong and unnecessary and nobody should ever be subjected to that.

You don't want no drama, drama

Via Sharon (one of my neighbors). Kid singing "My Humps." So cute and hilarious. It's going to be funny when his parents tell him what the first song he learned was. I hope my kid's first song is a Frank Sinatra song or something.

In other news, the new version of Vimeo which the creators have been working on for a good quarter of the year was launched today and I have to say that I really do like it a lot. It's more asethetically pleasing and I like the way it is organized as well. So, I'm guessing it's been a pretty exciting day for the Vimeo community. Check it out if you get the chance to, it's great. I have such a huge crush on this new layout.

My Vimeo clips

The Racon(AWESOME)teurs:

Matt got me an advance copy of The Raconteurs' CD "Broken Boy Soldiers" and it's pretty much amazing and I'm really glad I have these sweet connections. CD comes out May 16th - you should definately go buy it - it will be your summer soundtrack. Or if you can't wait that long (as in you've stremed the music on their website and it makes your heart thump really fast) let me know, and I'll send you a copy. Seriously, I have a huge crush on this CD like massive. I like this CD more than I like Anderson Cooper and that's saying a lot because I adore Mr. Cooper.

Spring Fling...

It's funny how Spring Flings are so ephemeral. Every Spring you notice relationships falling apart and people hooking up. I think it's ironic how such a happy time can bring so much sadness. I also think it's sad that this is the trend for Spring. It's happened for as long as I can remember and it's most apparent this year. It seems like everyone around me has some part in this... and I'd like to go on record and say I won't be participating in any of it this year.

Some things never do change...

Last night my dad came in my room and brought me medicine because he heard me coughing - he also closed my window. It made me happy because he used to check on me when I was a little kid in the middle of the night to just pull my covers up - and as cliche as this sounds, no matter how old I get, I will always be Daddy's little girl.

I really miss what really did exist.

I'm home to celebrate Easter with my parents and my Dad's birthday was also earlier this week and being together is a big deal with us on birthdays so though my parents went to the beach last weekend to celebrate with my sister, we essentially spent the whole day together today and it was great. I forgot how much I've missed this place - lately I've been getting pretty homesick at school and that's normal for a college kid, but I think I've been especially homesick because I know I will be spending my whole summer minus 2 weeks spread out here and there in Blacksburg taking summer classes and preparing for the MCATs. Unlike most of the student population, I really don't have summer to look forward to so I'm not exactly rejoicing or counting down the weeks until school gets out. Anyway, this weekend was great, it was just what I needed. We had brunch this morning and then went to down to the Occoquan River and marina and the weather was perfect for it. Sunny and 70 with the most delicious breeze ever. And of course we sealed our outing with some shopping... overall, mission accomplished. I had a great day.

In other news, Matt and I went over to Keirn's and that was great. She just got a teacup yorkshire terrior who is strikingly cute. It was really exciting. I'm not a huge fan of animals, but I loved her dog. It was so good to see her and her family today. I've missed them and I've missed just talking to her so it was good to catch up and see that she's doing well.

318 Shenandoah!

Rumor had it that Kendall's pictures were erased from the night we all went to Josh's... but alas, that proved to be false. She took a lot of pictures of myself and my housemates next year and this is our favorite and because we are infinately awesome, I felt the need to post this... plans to have it blown up and put in the house are underway - what can I say? I'm a girl, I live for home decor.

Snapshots!
I played tennis with Josh and Tommy last Thursday and Drew and some of our fans came out to watch our little game of Canadian doubles. Anyway, Drew found out that his camera (like most) take pictures in an action sequence so we decided to test it out. This was shortly after we finished our game and I was about to leave. You can click the image block above to enlarge it. I think it's pretty funny/neat. I really enoyed these.

Surveys are lame, I know...
(but, I felt like it was time to do one, hang in there champ)

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. AE retail (suckkkked! I worked a grand total of 4 times, bought all the flip flops I wanted, and quit)
2. Tutor/driver for these 2 awesome kids
3. Student
4. Daughter/Sister

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Jeux D'enfants (I love love love this movie)
2. Garden State
3. Chocolat
4. Amelie

Four places I have lived:
1. Farifax, VA
2. Loudoun County, VA
3. Blacksburg, VA
4. hopefully New York or North Carolina in the near future... where are you going to send me Med school?

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Arrested Development (stupid fox cancelled the show)
2. The OC (although it's beginning to be too ridiculous)
3. Project Runway
4. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Cancun, Mexico
2. Orange County, California
3. Niagara Falls
4. Miami

Four Websites I visit often:
1. Facebook.com
2. Cnn.com
3. Vimeo.com
4. Weather.com

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Homemade Fetuccini Alfredo
2. Salad with poppyseed dressing
3. Caesar Wraps with organic caesar dressing
4. Mom's breakfast

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. New York City!
2. Home
3. London, England
4. California

Thoughts before bed...

I've been reading about this story on CNN the past few days and it horrifies me that something like this could even happen. First off, this really really bothers me because it is the 911 operator's JOB to treat every incoming call as though it were an emergency. I know this first hand because when I was younger (this is before we had to dial area codes before local numbers), I would sometimes mis-dial my grandmother's phone number. The first three numbers were 914 and sometimes my little fingers would slip and 911 would accidently be dialed instead. I would normally just hang up, but every single time I misdialed the number - it was traced back to my house and there would always be a cop that showed up minutes later just to make sure everything was okay. This wasn't a common occurance, but sometimes I would slip. I would hate to think that this is not the protocol now. People are not only getting lazy, but they are getting sloppy at the expense of other people and it bothers me to no end. It's so unfortunate that something like this happened because of negligence but, let's get real... this type of stuff probably happens all the time - maybe not on such a grand scale, but you know what I mean.

Well I guess I should probably end on a good note. Link Via Dylan of a Sufjan video that should make you pretty happy. I have such a crush on this man, it's kind of ridiculous. While we're on the subject of Mr.Stevens, he has a new CD coming out, and by new I mean Illinoise outtakes... which I am pretty excited about. I'm going to make a promise to myself right now to go see him live. He hasn't been doing much touring - I think the only shows he's played have all been in New York so with that said, I think I am going to make a homage to New York to see him this year. Please hold me to it, because this will be for my own good.

Literally, bookbags...
(all puns intended - i'm gonna have to pat myself on the back for the title today)

Rebound designs can turn your old O-chem text book or actually, any old book you have laying around for that matter into a stylish purse. Ladies/nerds, rejoice. DCist talks about it in this article here. It's a little pricy seeing as you probably paid upwards of $120 for your science book to begin with, but it's a pretty neat idea.

For Your Entertainment

I found a video clip I took while on a roadtrip with some friends earlier this semester. We found the style section of The Washington Post in Drew's car with plans to invade Canada from the 1930's. It was completely hilarious, you can view the clip by clicking here.

Innocent Bystander

NBC - News Clip - this man was my firend's cousin. Everytime something like this happens, I think about Thoreau's "Walden" and how he says that you should only read the newspaper once because events are cyclical. I think about this and for some reason, I am drawn to the news even though it is the same thing over and over again. Everytime it seems as though it just hits closer and closer to home. I don't know, I guess just a thought for the night...

Weekend in Review

I'm a little sick so it was pretty low key. Thursday AED had a social as did the Sigmas (as usual) and I really wasn't feeling well before the AED social so I felt kind of bad because I was pretty lame. I only stayed for a few minutes. Oh well, there will be more socials in the future so hopefully I won't beel like crap then. The Sigmas were fun... it was nice getting together, it feels like we haven't in so long. Friday night I was supposed to go to a bonfire and we were supposed to have some live music which would have been great but... the tornados down south gave us lots of rain and thunderstorms so the bonfire was off. :( I ended up going to Phi Sig that night which was pretty low key. It was just the brothers and a few of us. No huge party or anything like that which was good. I wasn't in the mood to be around a bunch of drunk people. And last night, I went to a highlighter party which was fun because I've never been to one. For some reason every highlighter party I get invited to always falls through. I had a good time though, all the girls were out so that was great but I left a little early because again, I wasn't feeling well. It was funny reading the shirt this morning and see that people wrote things like "now accepting applications for ALL positions" strategically placed on the shirt.... oh the joys of college. So I guess all in all a good weekend for me at least. I got lots of sleep and now it's time to catch up on some work or at least get ahead. :P Who's a nerd? Ha ha. I'm going home for easter next weekend which I am really excited about. I'm actually really really homesick and then... before we know it FOXFIELD weekend will be upon us. I'm so excited. I have my dress and everything and the kids of UVA have made plans for us to stay and I haven't seen them this whole semester! I'm so excited! It's going to be a great weekend and before we know it, the school year will be over and I'll be in New York for a week or so before I'm back in Blacksburg taking summer classes and preparing for these MCATs! Life is moving so fast right now... I need some time to just stop and breathe but I've been having so much fun so far I feel like if I take some time to stop and breathe I'll miss what's going on... wow that sounded very Ferris Bueller... ha ha. Anyway, hope you guys had a good weekend too!

Newww

I get bored when things are unchanging so I decided to change the blog template. I know, I know, you're thinking "ohhhh, how you live on the edge of danger, mary." However, I was really getting annoyed with the other template because a) I didn't like the default font, and yes, I know there's a way I could go and change it but I just didn't feel like scrolling through pages of code to do it and b) it never underlined my link so people had a hard time figuring out where to click. Anyway, I hoping this will be easier. I think in the near future I will try to play around with the colors and see what I can do. But I really like the layout right now and I hope you do too.

In other news, I just want everybody to know that I have the biggest crush on The Raconteurs' song "Steady, As She Goes." It's been on repeat all day so if you get a chance to, DO check it out, it's great and you can do so by going to their awesome retro computer site here: The Raconteurs.

Myspace - The Movie

I was browsing the posts on Curbed.com this morning and found this video. It's a short on the Myspace experience and I thought it was hilarious... "the angles" is my favorite. I also liked "Tom" at the end - that was glorious as well. Anyway, I'll link it below... check it out, hope you like it just as much as I did.

Click this!

women's suffrage

My friend nassar sent this clip just now i guess in response to my away message where drew says "i am all for women's suffrage." Anyway, have a look if you can, it's almost appauling and hilarious how ridiculously dumb these girls are. It pains me to think that people like this will graduate and go to great schools like Harvard. How do you not know what women's suffrage is? Maybe they thought it was a petition to end women's suffering? I guess I'm trying to justify such stupidity but it's not working... this is just ridiculous. Watch it to have a good laugh.

Link here: Women's Suffrage clip

Kick Starting Greek Week with The Big Event.

This morning was The Big Event and festivities started at about 8am this morning when I woke up to music blasting on speakers. I had my alarm set but the music woke me up and also annoyed a lot of people in my hall who wern't participating in The Big Event. I'll have to admit, I really didn't want to do it this morning. Nobody wants to wake up at 9am on a Saturday morning to do Community Service but I'mg lad that I did. AED had about 30 people come out today. But even better was the fact that over 2,1000 students came out from various greek organizations as well as clubs. That puts Virginia Tech in the top 5 for largest turnout to The Big Event. That's kind of exciting right? We're well rounded kids. Anyway, I went out to Pembroke and helped some people at a church do yardwork. I haven't done yardwork... ever, but it wasn't that bad and they were really nice people and really appreciated us being there to help. I'm glad I went. But as for now... I have tons of work to do and I'm hoping to make it to the gym sometime today and maybe do some running and rowing.