I am happy to announce that I'm on "winter break," but it's more than halfway over. I've just been too busy and stranded from my computer to update. I have spent every day of the break working at Polo, and nearly every night with Tom and Julie at their house. Needless to say, there hasn't been much solitude with my computer. School has been hectic too, homework assignments, tests, club meetings--- I got my act together and joined this Society of Professional Journalists club--- so hopefully I get a more solid background in my major as a result of it. There's only been one meeting but the people who are in it are all really nice, laid back, knowledgable people. I think it's definitely going to be good for me.

So there's this cat at my house. Actually, there's a lot of cats at my house. When you live on a farm people find it acceptable to just drop random cats off that they decide they no longer want, or lack the time to take care of. This leads to cats multiplying, and a farm overrun with felines. Anyways, this one black cat has been hanging around, coming in and out of the house for over a year now, regularly giving birth to litters of kittens outside. A couple of weeks ago "Mama cat" gave birth to a kitten. Yes, a single, solitary kitten, and she took it upon herself to pick it upwith her teeth by the scruff of its neck, and bring it into our bathroom closet. So we now have a kitten in our closet.. :)

While I'm on the subject of pets, Tom caught a mole in his house awhile ago. It has been living in the wall for quite some time, sneaking out to steal from the dogfood bowl. He's never been quick enough to catch the thing, but finally he did. He constructed a little mole habitat in a large white bucket filled with like a foot of dirt, the top of a jar for a water dish, and a piece of wood. We named him Molson, after the beer. He burrowed in the dirt and drank his water and ate the dog food Tom would put in there for him. Things were great, until Julie caught a second mole, and her and Tom decided to put it in the same bucket as Molson... :/ only one mole remains. I think the second mole murdered Molson, he had a mean look to him.. and he was a little bigger. So sad.. Tom named this mole Ivan, as in Ivan the Terrible. I know you're probably all thinking "man, that's cruel, just let the creature go," but here's the dilema. It's damn cold out. The moles are chillin' in the walls for a reason. Let them go in the woods, they're going to burrow into a snowbank and die. If Tom's going to keep up with this mole catching business though, he's going to need more buckets and more dirt. RIP Molson..

Netflix has been treating me well. I got to watch one of the best movies I have ever seen.. "Into the Wild." Some of you have seen it I'm sure, but in case you haven't it's about a young guy, right out of college named Chris McCandless who gives up everything and leaves his life behind to seek adventure and hitchhike his way arond. He meets many people along the way who influence him and his ideas, but ultimately, his journey is his own. His final destination is the beautiful Alaskan wilderness, where he will sustain himself from the land, on his own. It's just a really good, inspiring movie.. Breaking off from society, pursuing happiness, self sufficiency.. It's based on a real guy, and I think the movie actually holds pretty true to the story, and there was also a book before the movie, which I really need to get my hands on.. Anyways, I loved it, and I reccomend it to anyone who hasn't watched it yet. Personally I'm a little on the hippie side sometimes, and watching this definitely brought that out. I feel like I need to go on some sort of adventure before I get too old and boring for it. I want to backpack around somewhere, maybe. Maybe Europe..Ireland, somewhere beautiful. Also unlike this guy though, I would rather not do it alone.

"Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return 'cause "the West is best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climatic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitch-hiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisened by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild." - Alexander Supertramp

Things of late

• Tea, tea, tea.


• NPR and This American Life broadcasts


• Stonyfield BaNilla yogurt


• Reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns"


• Hanging out with my dog.

This post has lacked in the visual aid department. I've honestly been too tired to go through the effort of uploading or searching for fitting pictures to accompany anything.. My apologies. I'm actually leaving for Syracuse in the morning to go to a farming convention with my mom. Should be interesting.We'll probably go shopping and check out the city too. We're staying atleast one night there, possibly a second if the weather is as bad as they're saying it's going to be. Well, I have to be up and getting ready in oh... 6 or 7 hours.. yikes. I should probably get to sleep. I'm hoping to post again about our trip fairly soon, but I wanted to squeeze an update on everything else in beforehand. Hope everything's going well for everyone :).

UPDATE:
I arrived safely and timely to my destination. I went shopping for awhile, picked up some books at the closing sale at Borders---is anyone else upset about this??! I felt like I was going to like, cry when I walked in there to see bare shelves and a shut down Seattle's Best :(. Now if I ever want a vanilla bean kula from there I'll have to actually GO to Seattle I bet. UGH :P. But it really does make me sad to see Borders go.. Now I'm just hanging out in the hotel room. I really like hotels, is that strange? I'm with my mom for this trip, but I would be perfectly okay with staying in a room by myself going on business or whatever, as long as it isn't a shithole or in some majorly creepy location. I just like traveling in general.

To increase the cute-factor of my post, I got around to adding a photo of my closet kitten. Now everybody say "Awwww" ;).

Olive