Soon...

... just a few days before I leave now. It just hit me this morning that I was really going to leave. I'm still adamant that I'm not nervous, or anxious, or feeling any other kind of negative emotion about going to school, but until today, it never really sunk in for me. I think it must have helped that I realized that one of my best friends is leaving on Wednesday.

That was quite the wake-up call. I've really got to get seriously packing.

Today has been one of those lovely days where we've gotten these cycles of 5 minute rainstorms followed by dazzling sunlight... it's especially nice right now, as it's getting later, and the sunlight looks more and more golden. I'm not particularly good at describing what is so attractive to me about all this, so you may just have to go with me on this one. Rain seems to bring out greens in a rather deep, vibrant way, and at this time of year, there's so much green around...

Anyway. I just got back from getting my hair cut. Yes. Again. I know I said I wanted to grow it out more, but, to be really honest, it wasn't looking that great, and I was getting bored with it. So. It's not that much shorter now... just past my shoulders, and with shorter pieces in the front... I'll have to take a picture and post it.

In the meantime, I've been finishing up all the books I've started over the summer. I finished Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose just last week... It really is a fantastic book-- one of my favorites (this was my third time finishing it in full).  It's essentially a biography of Meriwether Lewis, but it just as well could be a piece on the entire Core of Discovery. I finished Simon Schama's A History of Britain this morning-- another fantastic book (or set of books, rather), but I may be slightly biased by my history geekiness. Yeah... don't mind that. I read Catfish and Mandala, by Andrew W. Pham, for school summer reading, and to be perfectly frank, I didn't much like it, so I'll skip over to The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, as most of you probably already know. I got it for my birthday... it's one of those books I knew I had to read to be considered a proper American, but I somehow never got around to it until now. And now that I have read it, I can say that I wish I had read it earlier. It's a really wonderful book... and I'm now working on The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, which is another one of those books I've been meaning to read for a while. So, when they came out with a TV series based off of it, I knew I had to get on it. I refuse to watch the series until I finish the book, so, don't expect to be talking about that for a while... I'd hoped to have finished it by the time I left for school, but that doesn't look likely.

Well, no doubt I'll have more interesting things to write about very soon. Until then, my love to all,

Tasha

Packing

Not a whole lot has happened since my last post... I visited my friend Kathryn, who has just moved back to the US from the UK, about a week ago. It was really wonderful to see her, and now that we live in the same country again, I'm hoping we'll see more of each other. Other than that, it's been more shopping for college, more driving Nick places, more running around the village wildlife preserve... that has actually been particularly nice. It's not hiking in the mountains, but it's still something to keep me occupied. And I especially need it now... I've gotten to that point in summer where I'm so mindlessly bored and wishing I were back in school that a trip to the local coffee shop seems like an adventure. Of course, I'm not bored for any lack of things to do around the house. There are plenty of things to sort out in terms of packing for school, ordering my textbooks, etc, etc... but after a while, shuffling about in my own room, moving things from one box to another for hours on end starts to get a bit old.

So, when we got a three-day visit from Marianne and her family, I was extremely excited. It didn't mean I got to leave the house much more than I had/have been, but seeing people from the outside world was good enough. And I was especially happy since I hadn't seen Marianne in two years, and her husband in four, when I had visited them in Norway.

Since they left, I've rediscovered U2. And that is just about the most exciting thing that has happened to me in the past two days. Since my computer crashed, I've been trying to find CDs with all my old music on them, and in my searchings, I came across my father's U2 CDs, and... well. Nothing can match the obsession I had with them when I was 13, and I like to think I'm mature enough now to resist the temptation to fall back into that adolescent mindset. But it brings back a lot of memories... It's strange to come back to that music as a very (if not completely) different person than I was just 5 years ago. It's also the slightest bit creepy, to be honest.

But in any case. I've started counting down the days until I leave for Goucher... and not including the rest of today, I have 9 days left. My mum asked me the other day what I would like to do with my last evening at home, which will be next Saturday, in fact. I believe the plan for now is to go to an air show during the day, and either a picnic (which nobody but me will enjoy) or a BBQ at home (which will feature everybody else eating hotdogs and hamburgers, and me with the humus and carrots). So we'll see what happens with that.

And speaking of Goucher, I have heard from my roommate. Not in the past two weeks, but I know she exists now. So. That's good news, I suppose.

And... that's about it. I hope everybody is well, and I will write more soon.

Tasha