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