finals = photoblog.

Finals suck.

But in other news, I'm in full-blown Christmas mode (sometimes at the expense of studying.. oops) and I snagged a bunch of awesome gifts for people (and myself!). My favorite so far?



Canon PowerShot, in PINK, duh.

That's for me, of course. New cameras make me excited. I don't get to open this baby until Christmas Eve-ish, but that's probably good because otherwise, I would waste even large amounts of time taking pictures and the like.

Speaking of, here are a random smattering of pictures from the past couple of weeks.


My closest-in-age older cousin, at our younger cousin's confirmation party. He's pretty awesome. But more importantly, look at me, pulling off the Mature But Still Trendy look. I feel like at every family event that Lyndsay (my seventeen-year-old trendster of a cousin) attends, I have this secret urge to try to be as trendy as she is. This ensemble wasn't super hip, but classic and also more age-appropriate. Because I keep forgetting that um, I'm a senior in college. A-heh.


And here we all are. These are all the "kids" on my Dad's side of the family. We're in height order, which is definitely not age order. From left to right - Clancy (24), Lyndsay (17), John (14), me (21), Matt (23), Dan (19). That's mainly because my brother's a giant (he gets it from my mom's side) and my two aunts on my Dad's side are itty bitty, the gene I apparently missed.

Can I mention that we pretty much live for the goofy pictures? It's a tradition, because my Dad's family is silly and fun - after all the aunts and uncles finished taking pictures, they'd actually prompt us for funny faces. And we're still doing it now.


This is me on Thanksgiving. I'm thinking this outfit has just enough trend to kick Lyndsay's ass in our Outfit Showdown (that she is completely unaware of). Too bad I didn't spend Thanksgiving with her.. but I am leaving this up as an option for Christmas. Anyway. The only downside here were the shoes, which are apparently a half-size too big. They were slightly painful to walk in but mostly awkward, because I couldn't walk regularly. I was doing some weird pseudo shuffle back and forth from the kitchen.


I can't remember if I've ever told you that my family calls me a mini Martha Stewart. They do. Now you know why. I baked, iced, and sprinkled these babies, and may I mention that I made a decorative little swirl on the top of each one? Then I wrapped them, made tags, and ribbon'd them. Because who needs to study when adorable baked goods are calling to be made, wrapped, and handed out?! Nobody, that's who.

Hopefully you enjoyed my myriad of semi-unrelated photos. It's all I can really manage with all this accounting information floating around in my head. Because it's really, really important to know how to account for a solid waste landfill. Isn't it?

just four more days...

Here I am, visiting you from the desolate world of Studying for Finals. Ugh. Ick. Gross. And many other outbursts of disgust.

I think I'm going to have nightmares about Post-It flags, present value formulas, p-values, and strangely enough, Mahjong Safari, which is one of the only things keeping me sane right now.

As most [read:all] people, I don't like finals. My break from studying for one final? Studying for another one. I have my Super Huge Accounting Final on Wednesday, so that's basically all I've been studying for these past four days. However. I also have a Capital Budgeting final tomorrow. To convey the lack of importance I'm placing on this particular final, here's a thought that crossed my mind: I wonder how long it'll take me, so I can get back to studying for accounting. Right. I also have two more exams, one on Thursday and one Friday. Needless to say, I haven't even touched those books yet. In fact, I barely remembered what my fourth final even was.

My accounting tests are absolutely dreadful. Just when you think you have a grasp of the concepts and the calculations that need to happen.. WHAM. There's a completely messed up problem with tricks and turns. It's always one of two things. The first is that one tiny sentence in the description of the problem that you've never seen in any of the thousands of examples done in class. The other is that wonderful moment when you're halfway through the problem, and you look back up at the information to find a number that is usually given only to find IT'S NOT THERE. Yes, I understand the logic behind this - if you really know what you're doing, you should be able to know where all the numbers came from and how to find the missing ones. Too bad that, say, 90% of the class has NO IDEA what they're doing. It's just a little frustrating to go into a test, think you've prepared well by doing all the problems twice over, then finding out the professor wanted to "challenge" you. Especially when you're me and you basically have to ace the final to get a decent grade out of the class.

**

At my school, we have a system of "points" as part of our dining plan. Essentially, these points are just dollars. And I happen to have 450 of them waiting to be spent in the next four days. It happens to a lot of people here, which is why our on-campus convenience store inflates prices to ridiculous things like $40 for a twenty-four pack of water. Plus, the store gets flooded with all these students who feel bad about having leftover points and are therefore spending them on anything possible. Here are my purchases for today:

• Two Sesame Chicken Lean Cuisines
• Two bags of Flat Earth veggie chips
• Four bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies
• A bag of Tostitos (the lime ones, of course)
  
• Gummy bears
• Gummy Savers
• French Vanilla Pirouette Cookies from Pepperidge Farm
• Vanilla Dibs
• Some fancy Pepperedge Farm cheese cracker stick things

Yeah. I've already eaten the gummy bears, sampled the cracker sticks and some of the cookies, and inhaled half a bag of the veggie chips. Sadly, when I went on my second trip (yes, that's right - I was there twice today), they didn't have the case of the drink I really like. Hopefully they'll have it tomorrow, because I'm sure it'll be some insane price and will hopefully bring my total down a bit.

If only they sold shoes here on campus for points. Do you know how easily I could spend $450 on shoes?