Back to School and Girlie Get-Togethers

Well, please allow me rant for a moment about school. I have not officially had a class yet (that will happen tonight). However, the professor for the class that was supposed to meet yesterday morning emailed the class and gave us an assignment. Not a big deal... Until you start working on the assignment. Okay, just so that I can share this lovely gem, let me allow you to visit the website I am required to visit, explore, and from which I am to answer some very vague questions, such as: "'epistemological meanings' - what do the authors mean by this?" Here's the link: Epistemological Lifeboat. As I spent time working on it yesterday, it became rapidly clear to me that the whole site is nothing but a bunch of jibberish made up by two people who are trying very hard to sound intelligent... and failing. So, I hope you can enjoy it as much as I have. I am still working on some of the ridiculous questions. And I'm almost positive that this class is going to be the class I despise most, not just for the semester, but for the entire program. Too bad it's one of the required classes. Ugh.

Okay, and on to much more fun news... So my church friend Amber had a "potluck" dinner for some people at her house last night. And, nerd that I am, I took my camera and took pictures. So, here was our spread (this is, of course, an obligatory picture anytime there is food...):Clockwise from the top (excluding the decorations, which were done by Jill) are: coconut and chocolate cakes (brought by Janna), oven fries (brought by Stefanie), mashed potatoe bake (brought by Rachel, who also brought the olives), pecan-crusted chicken (made by Amber), cheeseball and crackers (brought by me), and lemonade (provided by Amber and Jill).

And here we are, normal and crazy :).
And, so you know who we all are... Left to right is me, Jill (Amber's roommate), Stefanie (my roommate), Amber, Rachel, and Janna.

After dinner we played about 2 hours' worth of exciting and intense Uno. And I mean intense. Amber introduced some new rule of which none of us had ever before heard. It's called "Match-Play." Basically you can do this out of turn IF you have the exact duplicate in your hand of the card just played. And by doing this, you can end up skipping people's turns. Anyway, it's complicated. And it took me until the end of the night before I was actually quick enough to get this :). I think I'm getting old...

Speaking of getting old... I have started taking vitamins. Apparently maybe I should have been doing this all along. But I wasn't. So now I take a women's multi-vitamin and biotin (which is supposed to help hair and nails) every day. I'm telling you, I'm popping pills right and left (haha, just kidding). Makes me feel like an old person :). Oh, and I've given up the battle on gray hair. There was a time when I could count the number of gray hairs on my head (the number used to be 8). That was a long time ago, now. And 8 gray hairs, which was once a nightmare, now seems like "a dream devoutly to be wished." Now it's everywhere, it's everywhere! On the up-side, the gray hair seems to be thicker and wavier than the brown hair (and the thinning brown hair has been a tragedy for me too, and is what actually made me start taking the vitamins and biotin). Okay, I think I need to revise my earlier statement. Maybe I'm not getting old. Maybe I am old. I think I'm going to go cry now ;).