TWO DAYS UNTIL I GO TO TANZANIA. I haven't packed. Luckily I managed to go to the bank/pharmacy/other things that are closed for the next two days on Friday when I rushed back into Bellingham from Canadian camping adventures with the family, which rocked... but I'm superbly unprepared on other fronts and it is warm and sunny and 80 stinking ( Read more... )

I realized exactly how badly I want to go to Tanzania when having a freak out about the status of my visa last week. And this morning when I called and finally talked to a real person for the first time in a week and was informed that my passport was on the way, it was this amazing sense of calm and not being paranoid that I might end up stranded ( Read more... )

Lake Padden is finally ready for swimming and here I am, getting ready to leave town. Yesterday afternoon was marvelous times... with weird boys who were putting up a rope swing (awesome) and trying to remove branches from a huge tree (sad alert)... and us making it all the way around the short loop and not being frozen upon exit of the lake. ( Read more... )

It is far too easy to re-integrate into this town. I love pretty much everything about Bellingham, but one month will be long enough for now or I might get sucked in and never leave. That's not due to happen for at least another 10 years or so ( Read more... )

I'm in love with Bellingham more than ever ( Read more... )

It is full of quirky professors in colored hooded robes that symbolize the places were they cemented themselves into a system that loves learning and teaching but avoids being a part of the real world. It is ceremonious, traditional- marked by Greek and Latin names, honors, selective societies... it is a place of speeches that reference the second ( Read more... )

It's distincly possible that I am the world's biggest nerd ( Read more... )

Everyone loves them. Maybe one of the best adrenaline rushes- studying like crazy, drinking massive amounts of coffee, showing up for said exam with a bunch of other equally worked up folks. Then taking said exam and pouring one's academic heart out to some heartless professor who will doubtlessly find fault in any answer, regardless of how ( Read more... )

Amazing SCUBA diving weekend in Seattle- I can't even describe how utterly cool it is to be 40 feet underwater in the sound in the pitch black night watching a seal hunt in the beam of my underwater flashlight. Then we surface and the Seattle skyline is lit up across the water on the gorgeous clear night with container ships cruising across the ( Read more... )

I feel like every time the semester is about to end, I become hideously, undeterrably happy at LC... it's been a good week, an academic all star sort of week, a week of good friends and good times and the appreciation of being here and living in general. Yet at the same time, those wonderful things can be completey unspectacular. I'm finally back ( Read more... )