en route

Trotting this globe thing
As far as the sun reaches,
I search for ...


Got that?  It's an interactive blog post.  You get to choose how my haiku ends.  :P  You get two syllables.

So right now I'm chillin in YOW (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada).  I bid a fond farewell to Olex, Julius, and Patrick at O'Hare today, as well as to my grandparents and aunt and their dogs at the house this morning.  I said goodbye to Bloomington and the Llama school yesterday, and my parents the day before that.  It's a sad time.  :(

I did get my visa, though, which was supremely exciting.  I've never had a nifty sticker in my passport before!  I'll post a photo of it on CERNtainly, which I have decided will be my new blog (thanks, Venus!).  I also have met some kind people already on this trip: a woman who was seriously jonesing for cigarettes (which she had been denied since entering LAX this morning at 10 a.m.) and gave me and a girl from Mexico headed to college a little cheer; a security worker who told me that in French they say, "Simple is fashionable," and that I was dressed very nicely; bag throwers (I didn't actually meet them) who ensured that my bag was THE FIRST ONE OFF THE CAROUSEL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER (BEST DAY OF MY LIFE); and a little girl who gave me a big, bright smile when I was just getting bummed out about leaving everyone.

Agh!  There are so many adventures to report!

The trip to Chicago?  Great success!  We watched the fireworks at Navy Pier for the New Year and rode home in a limo first thing in 2010, and we spent some time in the fabulous Museum of Science and Industry and famous Gino's.  There was also city exploring and German card games and random fun.

After that?  I brought Julius and Olex back to Columbus, we saw Avatar and my friends from high school (hi, guys!), then headed to the Llama School to hang out with Patrick, Roy, Thabang, Sean, and Amethyst.  They experienced caving (Patrick and Roy, too; also photos of that should appear on Sean's Flickr page soon) and Torchwood, and we did karaoke and general hanging out.  We also had some fun adventures just cleaning the clothes from caving; they'd frozen into amusing shapes.

Anyway, this is it for this blog, y'all.  University was a blast.

<3

happy new year

And what about you?

Did you get it all done?  Did

You leave your year pleased?

It was a successful year.  10 countries, 2 degrees, dozens of new friends, 21 years of age, 365 adventures...  thanks a lot, you guys.

amusing

Mosaics drift, soft,
Silent over now-bare limbs,
Winter sun above.

Oh, I do love fall.  Probably I won't stop harping about that until winter.

I was amused by a few things this week, most notably the fliers and chalk ads that just went up all around Lindley Hall (the computer science building) for the IU Gaming Club's LAN WAR.  Hahaha.  It's like they think they're going to target their marketing or something.  :)

Equally amusing (though less local): Obama has declared Swine Flu to be a national emergency.

Victoria's Secret sponsored a huge concert at IU this week, too, for some concert that we won (that I never heard about).  The moral of the story is that Girl Talk and Cobra Starship performed on a huge, pink, steel stage that was nearly as tall as our damn Union building, which is pretty freakin' tall.  It was a cool show (part of which I missed due to play practice.  sad.).

Patrick and I went on an adventure this morning to an old railroad trestle west of town.  I'd been there before, but with all the leaves turning and such, it was positively gorgeous to walk out on.  It stretches about a mile over a valley, and said valley is ringed with trees that were like rippling poetry in the wind with their browns and oranges.  I couldn't convince him to go all the way across, though; I guess reasonable people don't want to walk a mile across a span hundreds of feet above the ground.  Go figure.

In unrelated news, I can't believe I haven't used "adventure" as a label on this blog until now.  Egad!  What am I doing with my life!?