In three days, I will be making my first ever trip out of the beautiful land of America (r.e. USA) and going off to see other beautiful places.

Okay, I lie. I’ve been overseas before. But I figure living in Germany between the ages of 0-4 doesn’t count because I don’t remember any of it.

So where am I going to? East Asia. I’m going with a group from my college and I swear we are going to have so much fun. I’ll be gone for three weeks and when I come back, I will have many many pictures.

It’s going to be an interesting experience for me too. When I say I’ve never been out of the country (aside from the aforementioned time) I mean never. Not even to Mexico which, really, is only a few hours south of where I live.

Even living in California, there’s only so much other culture you can experience. (Usually said culture is movie stars or gangs. There’s not much middle ground.)

So here I am, boldly jumping into the unknown. Into a culture I have oly scratched the surface on. I know I’ll be changed and I hope that change is for the better.

We’re down to the wire here. Less than two weeks left of school. I still have one report I have to finish and finals start this Thursday. Wow.

My first real year at a university has been full of learning experiences. I’ve gained new friends and learned more about who God is and what He wants from me. I’ve learnned a fun new language (Chinese, for the curious), studied the old and new testaments in detail, got started on my graphic design portfolio (six different pieces already!), and signed up for a wonderful opportunity that will take me to East Asia on an International Service Project. I’ll be going for 3 weeks in the summer.

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing, and I’ve been doing less reading. If I said I was reading my school textbooks, I’d be lying. One of the best things to come my way (other than ISP) is the RPG club. It’s one night out of the week where I can just enjoy things.

Unfortunately, it feels like it may be coming to an end. See, the RPG Club was originally found by a group of people who have since gone on to more important things. They were their last semester, playing in their advanced campaign while the noobs sat at another table and played a beginner campaign. That makes it sound bad. No, the originals were all very nice and helpful. Really. They ran another campaign on their own another night of the week, and still came on Thursdays. It was nice the first semester.

This spring semester, however, people got busy. Not wholly surprising, considering one of them is getting married and others are graduating.

Still, it feels as though the RPG club is dying and may not survive to next semester. Some of us are discussing doing our own campaign outside the RPG night and I’m really hoping that works out because if not, and if RPG club goes away, then I’m not going to have a relaxation time away from schoolwork and homework. I might as well go back to the shy, timid girl who wastes her time away on the internet and has no social life. (I may be exaggerating a little, but I was pretty close to that before I came here to school so it’s a valid fear.)

So as school closes and we all go our separate ways, I can only hope that I won’t backslide this fall when I come back and see all my friends again.

I turned 29 yesterday and it was definitely one of my better birthdays. There was a moment where it seemed iffy, but everything turned out great in the end. Just wish my other friend could have been there. Get well soon, dear.

So what have I been doing this past year? Well, I’d say the biggest change in my life was quitting my job (which took a lot of courage, considering the economy) and starting school. It’s not that far from home, but I took the step and moved in with twenty-nothings. Bunch of young whippersnappers, if you ask me. But that may be the age speaking.

I made new friends whom I’m able to be a little crazy with.

I haven’t been writing as much, but my roleplaying has increased.

So my goals for the next year are:

1: Write at least one story.
2: Have at least 1k in savings
3: Be more outgoing.

I’m still single, unfortunately, which doesn’t make me happy, but I’ve learned to deal with it.

Anyways, not much happens in my life, but there it is.

When I asked what I should write on, a good friend told me to write about the conspicuous lack of apple pie in Lord of the Rings. Ah, good ol’ apple pie.

If you’ve ever eaten at Coco’s (or maybe if you haven’t), you probably know that they are famous for their pies. Their apple pie happens to be my favorite. This is for one reason.

They use pippin apples.

Okay, so not to go too deep into the weirdness of this, but come on. Just listen to this menu description: Tart and sweet Pippin apples are dusted with sugar and cinnamon and baked until bubbly. How delicious does that sound? And Pippin being my favorite Lord of the Rings character has nothing to do with it. (Okay, maybe a little. Try not to picture the hot little hobbit dusted with cinnamon and sugar.)

So. Lord of the Rings and apple pie. It has been a while since I watched the movies or read the book. (I know, I know. Don’t shun me. I’m a college student. I don’t have 12 hours to devote to watching the movies. I’m lucky if I have 10 minutes to sleep.) Either way, I really do not recall any apple pie in Lord of the Rings. So here’s a question for you. If there had been apple pie, could it have destroyed the one ring?

I know what you’re thinking. Apple Pie. One Ring. No contest, right? But if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, how much more could a bunch of apples, infused with special, attribute-enhancing spices, and forged in the fires of Mom’s Kitchen, do?

For those of you who enjoy photos, I uploaded some new ones to my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/agerfen/

Here’s a preview:

A soldier, returning after 14 months in Iraq, gets greeted by his dogs.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates!

I woke up this morning to discover that my laptop had died. Needless to say, my day did not start out well. I went over to my aunt’s house and had fun with them. But I’m really not cut out for kids. Although, yesterday I found myself in Babies ‘R Us with my friend and now I want a little girl. They get such adorable clothes. Grown women really can’t wear those sorts of clothes… unless they live in Japan.

The good news is that my laptop is working again. Had to reinstall the operating system, but I already had most of my files off of the computer before that, so I didn’t lose much, thank goodness.

I love Mental Floss. They have awesome stuff on there.

So here I sit, almost half way through the month of November. It’s been an interesting couple of months, living with roommates, away at college, studying full time and being broke too. I get along all right with my roommates, by which I mean I hardly speak to them and the few times I do, we talk of pleasant, if inane, things. (Not including the old ‘Your mother doesn’t live here. Clean up after yourself’ spiel. I, unfortunately have a bad habit of that, but I try to be respectful of their wishes.)

I have made friends. Yes, real friends. I joined the rpg gaming club. (Yes, we are a Baptist college and we have an RPG club. Suck it up.) It’s been awesome and, *gasp, horror* is my first time really tabletop rp’ing. Everyone’s been really nice of the fact that I’m a relative noob at it. And, thankfully, I’m not alone. Interesting fact? Apparently lots of people who want to get started in D&D are frightened of all the old pro’s. Well, okay, I was. I would sit alone at night thinking, Gee, I’d really like to start, but they probably wouldn’t be patient with me.

But they have been patient and I’m really enjoying it.

November started and with that, NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know what that is, you obviously aren’t a friend of mine because I would have talked your ear off about it. And tried to get you to do it, whether you’re a writer or not. National Novel Writing Month, for the less informed. Despite my enthusiasm, I’ve had a)No time to write and b)No motivation. Everytime I sit down and think I need to start writing, a million other things come to mind that have precedence. Not the least of which is homework.

Ah homework. The bane of my existence. Unfortunately, I can’t just say no to homework as I’m riding that fine line between a 2.99 GPA and a 3.0. I’m dearly hoping to hit 3.0 at the end of this semester. It’ll open up so many scholarships previously unavailable to me.

As if November weren’t bad enough, I ended up with the flu on Sunday. Of all the days I could have gotten it, that was the worst. We had a concert on Sunday night and it was the one concert my family was going to be able to go to. And I had to call everyone up and tell them.

But it also made me realize what good friends I have here at school now. One of them brought me crackers and Sprite for when I was able to start eating and sat with me for a few minutes. Another brought me chicken noodle soup.

Now there is only about a month left in this semester. I’m both eager for it to end and not. I’m looking forward to not having to do homework all the time, but I enjoy learning. I still say that one of my best classes has been Old Testament Survey because there is so much I’m learning that I wasn’t aware of before. I’m taking New Testament Survey next year. Hopefully it’ll be slightly easier without all the prophets.

It all started with me living in this world much like the movie Waterworld, except there was land. Just not a lot of it. And the little bit of land was owned by this guy no one liked. So me and a couple other people didn’t want to live there.

Then we were captured and taken there and I realized just how bad things were. It wasn’t that they didn’t have anything, but it was all really expensive. Like $1000 for toothpaste. But, as it turns out, I was from an alternate universe anyways. I just didn’t want to go back cause I was already taking classes in this world and I didn’t want to start over.

So I had to call my mom from across the universes cause I needed stuff.That’s about when I woke up. I went back to sleep and dreamt this.

I was with a guy and we were hunting down this creature in an old house. I was just along for the ride. The guy I was with had the bounty for the creature. So we go into this house and it has a Super Mario Bros feel. Except the main boss isn’t Koopa, it’s some old hag. We manage to catch her, but then she entices the guy with something else and he gives her to me to watch.

Only she gets away and then I’m being chased by a ghost who wants the old hag to let him work for her. I don’t know how that one ended either. I woke too soon from it.

Since I quit the library to go to school, I have been looking for a job close to the university. So far I’ve had no luck. but last night I discovered that there were a few new job openings on campus. So I did what any desperate college student would do. I woke up early, got myself looking all nice, filled out the handy applications I had on hand already for on-campus jobs, and left to drop them off.

The first place I went was Human resources. HR is not actually located on campus. It’s down the street, apparently next to CVS. That’s the only direction I had. So I bike over to CVS, and I look at the building next door. It says on the front of the building in huge letters ‘Primerica’. So, naturally, I keep going. Until I hit the freeway overpass. Then I realize I’ve gone too far.

I bike back to where I was and stare at the Primerica building for a few minutes. FInally I decide to bike around the back of the building. Still don’t see any signs. FInally on the side of the building, taped to a door, I see a piece of paper, no bigger than a regular sheet of printer paper, that had the college name with an arrow pointing to the back door.

I finally make it to Human Resources and the lady tells me I’m supposed to drop the application off at Career Services. I stare at her for a second, then point out that the Job Board says to take it to HR. Things get really confusing, until I point out that I am applying for the student worker position in Human Resources. She hadn’t read that far.

We laugh it off and I leave the application with her and head back.

My next stop is the food services office, where they are hiring for several positions. Again, I have trouble finding the office. Even with directions. Of course, they weren’t clear directions, but that’s beside the point. Again I go completely around the side of the building until I find the entrance.

Well, at least the pplications are dropped off. Let’s hope my lack of sense of direction does not impair my ability to get one of the jobs.