It appears to be October. Since when did that happen? I have thoroughly let G-ma down by not updating the blog regularly. I suppose once in a while is good enough, right?

Let's see...last blog ended with the Burka girls on a trek to the beach. We had fun. Took lots of pictures. Cause we're fabulous like that.
At the end of the summer, we had the French guys over for tacos. Thought I'd make them some really American food.Mo moved in to Clemson and we hanged out and stuff. We went to the Bowman Block Party and got our picture with the guy with pretty eyes.School is school and rather boring, so I'm not going to talk about it. Skipping over school, it's time for football!
Before the FSU game, Olivia and I went to see the band preview show.
Randi and I are taking our pictures for the coasters on our coffee table so we don't have to have AIDS coasters anymore.Julie and I at the parade! Yayyy!
Shelly and I also at the parade. We almost managed to stop laughing for the picture.
My favorite Balderstons. My only Balderstons, but they don't know that...
Julie and Stabler got hold of my camera after the parade. The rest of the pictures were creepy ones of me...
Football game was good. We won. Yay!
Amy and I went with Olivia and Shelly. Basically, it was a girls' party at the football game!
Got to see the drumline play after the game. Woooo!
This is everyone rushing the field...for the third time. It took the refs a while to actually declare the game over.
I got to wear the hat thinger. Yay! Like my orange overalls?
The next weekend was the Louisiana-Monroe game. It was really really hot out. I opted not to wear the overalls so I wouldn't die of heat stroke. This is Molly, Ashley, myself (duh), and Shelly at the Crosspoint tailgate.
Shelly, Julie and I at the game...
Olivia and I did Paul's hair. It was a masterpiece.
And the rest of the marvelous drumline...We went to Greenville to see Olivia's friend's band play, then we went out for sushi afterward. This is Paul looking like a walrus and Olivia looking fabulous as usual.
Due to the sheer length of this post, I am going to leave off here and come back with stories about the trip to Detroit and the loss to Virginia Tech and my coming trip to K-town...

The Lazy Days of Summer

And I do mean lazy.
I mean, I'm obviously too lazy to have posted anything about the summer so far. Except the day I had writers' block. It took me another 3 weeks or so to write that paper, just for the record, as I wasn't given a deadline until just before we went to Ohio. It was a killer paper, as in it rocked. I just hope it wasn't so good that they make me write another one.
I am now going to attempt to summarize my summer in one post. It should be quite boring for all of you.
The first week of June was spent at the beach. It was quite fun. We had G-ma and G-pa and Aunt Rose and Sam and Uncle Paul and Dad and Mom and Amy and I there. We went to Ocracoke out on the Outer Banks and had a lovely time. We had bikes and rode around being all cute and stuff. There were crabs and a lighthouse and o'cokers. I have put these pictures up either on my facebook photos or on my picasa photos (mentioned in a previous post), so go look at them there and save me some time.
Lots of work after that. For those who have no clue what I've been doing this summer, I am working in a research group at Clemson. Working with glass and all that that entails. It has been lovely. Maybe not, but at least I can almost say that with a straight face. I look at it like this: as annoying as working with certain people can be, it is an excellent experience to have research under my belt. I will have my name on different projects and will look a lot better on paper. There. My summer work has been justified. Here are some pictures of work and work people and stuff...
This was everyone on my birthday...That's why there are TWO cakes in front of me.
This is at Ankit's poster presentation. Ankit was one of the high schoolers we had. He rocks because he has the same birthday as I do.
This is a piece of my glass. Yeah. Little bitty. I wish the picture with my finger in it was on my computer. I would show you that instead.
Now, on to more interesting stuff. Work was lovely. Lots and lots of work. Not much to shout about. Went to Ohio the weekend before my birthday with Olivia and Andrew to see our favorite Paul Berger. We drove up on Friday, saw Jesus a lot, and we found peace on the way...When we got there, we swam and ate pizza and the awesome cake his Grandmother made for me...I mean, how many of YOU can say you had your last name on a birthday cake? Saturday, we went on the boat Paul works on and went to the cute little islands and stuff...We tried to see how many people we could fit on one twin bed too while we were at it.
Sunday, we went out on the boat and just generally chilled (and got really sunburned too!)...I was really boring on Sunday night and I worked on the aforementioned stupid paper. I got it done though! Yay!
Monday was Cedar Point. I would like to thank Paul and the random coincidence of knowing Paul that allowed me to fulfill one of my life goals of riding the freaking tall roller coaster there. Not to mention all of the other ones too.On the way home on Tuesday, we totally found Peace again, not to mention the future (which I totally didn't get a picture of, so nobody will ever believe us) and Bland Virginia.
I went home Tuesday night and got my fabulous harry potter birthday banner. Oh and my copy of the book. I got a fabulous necklace from mommy and daddy and some earrings from Amy and some other stuff. After work I went to dinner with the girls at Olive Garden where we flirted shamelessly with the waiter.
Randi moves in with me tomorrow, then I'm going to the beach with Mom and Amy this weekend. School starts in like 3 weeks or something, so people are starting to come back to Clemson soon. Yay!

The solution to writer's block...

I've figured out that writing is the solution to writer's block. Genius, I know. I'm supposed to be writing a literature review for work before my boss gets back from wherever she is right now. Somewhere in Europe, I think. Today is a good day to write. The weather is crap, so I don't want to go outside. We have Wednesday off, so I can't start any new work today, thus leaving me with a huge amount of time that should be spent working on the literature review. I have the literature. Most of it. I'm surrounded by it at the moment. Something like 25 papers in front of me. And I can't write. I've determined that the problem lies in formatting. See, I am a whiz at a five-paragraph essay. And when it comes to rambling on about life, I can tear that up in a heartbeat as all you readers can attest to. But this assignment has no format. No thesis statement. Simply "look up papers relating to your research and the compositions you're working with and write about your findings." My first solution to this problem was that I would break it into four five-paragraph essays so that they would be in a format I could wrap my mind around. That didn't work. I couldn't start. Still. So now I'm writing. Anything, everything. I'm writing this, I'm reading papers and writing random sentences about what I read. I figure at the very least I can write it and organize it later. What on earth is wrong with me?!? I mean, it's pretty obvious that I love to write. I love to use lots and lots of words. I like to talk (duh...haha). I don't mind working on papers when I have a format. Guidelines. As mister Berger would say, ajewiuwehriuw!

I guess I better go write what I'm supposed to be writing...