speeches and papers

not too much is new. i suppose i live a relatively boring life, or a blur. i just got out of class a couple hours ago. wednesdays are definitely long days for me. i go to school from 8-3, then from 3-6 i have my speech class at the college, then from 6-9 i have english 1102. i had my rough draft for my first term paper due tonight for english. i had to write a research paper on one of the aspects of william faulker's "barn burning." i chose to write about critical reviews that talk about an omniscient narrator in the thoughts of sarty from the past, present, and future. that was a hard paper to write because there was a very limited resource of critics that had valid information. everything i googled all came up essays that i could buy so i could only use a source through the community colleges called linccweb. it turned out ok. not my favorite paper to say the least. the short story was pretty good though.

on the other hand, i am working on a series of speeches for my communications class. we all had to pick a broad topic that would be the basis for all of our speeches throughout the semester. i chose fiber arts. i am very excited about this class. i like the professor a lot and even though i had a full schedule as it was, i'm glad i picked up the class at the last minute. the only thing is the professor can be a little boring and very repetitive. our first speeches are informative. we have to have two main points so i'm gonna do spinning and knitting and talk about different aspects of the two. then in a couple weeks from that speech we are doing a demonstrative speech. i'm really looking forward to that one. i think i'm gonna bring in a wheel and show the whole process from roving to yarn. the first speech only has to be five minutes. i think if i had to do a spontaneous speech on knitting and spinning i could do it in over ten. it should be a breeze and fun. plus, most of the people in my class don't even know what fiber arts are. how naive can you get. but maybe i can educate them on the joys of working with fibers and creating something by hand.

a couple days ago i sent in the deposit for my tuition at the university of florida. so i am officially a florida gator now. then on monday i filled out the housing information and signed the contract which i sent off with a check for that deposit. i'm getting very excited. now i need to start really working on scholarships and filling out my fasfa forms and stuff.

this is my first choice for a dorm. it's murphree. it's in the historic part of campus. also while it's pretty like the others, it was renovated in 2005 which is nice. my friend who lives there now said it doesn't make that big of a difference, but what my thoughts were if i'm sharing a bathroom with a floor of other girls, i would want new pipes for the plumbing as opposed to one with old plumbing.

i have the next two days off of school which is really nice. the county fair has been going on. we basically have school off because all the students who are showing cattle are given the two days to get them ready and over to the fair. so they put two different teacher work days for the next two days. i haven't stayed at my dad's house since i started working on saturdays so i'm gonna go spend the night there then with my mom on friday morning. it works out well cause now my mom will have company coming back home.

i haven't had any time to do any knitting or spinning lately. maybe over the weekend i will be completely caught up with all my classes start working ahead some so i'll have time for the joys in life.

it's great to be a florida gator!!!

well lots has happened since i last posted. i will start with the oldest and end with the newest.

i spun up the first batch of the fluff from the dye-spin-knit.

raja is such a lover kitty. and he even appreciates the art of spinning. i finished that color.

didn't it turn out just b-e-a-utiful!

here is my senior night photo. from left to right it's tiffany, me, maria (pili), and my good friend kaylee (kaywang). we got flowers and a pan of chocolate chip cookies with our number on it.

for my physics class, my partner and i had to create a car from a limited list of materials. then, after christmas break all of the teams competed in a competition called king of the hill. two cars start at the end of a two sided ramp and the object was to get your car over the middle of the ramp more than the other.

here is our car in the making.

and here i am with our finished car. the rubber bands that propelled it didn't sit on top like that. we altered that and got new rubber bands, BIG ones, and the wrapped around the axles and connected them to the bottom of that big bolt sticking out of it. i think ours was definitely the heaviest.

here's our car with some of the others. we lost but it was the most retarded loss. there is no doubt that we wouldn't have won. on the last day of eliminations, we had to go three times in a row and that left us with limited to no time for repairs. for optimal use, we needed to change our rubber bands after each competitor we went against. well we couldn't, and by the last one of the day, the round that decided who would be in the final two, we went against one of the harder people to beat. at the start of the race, one of our bands was completely broken and the other three with shredded and on their way to being completely broken as well. it was not a fair race. it makes me very pissed off. obviously we lost and i knew we would before the round even begun.

then a couple weeks ago something very, very sad occurred. the soccer team was meeting at the school. varsity girls and boys had a double header game, and we were waiting for the bus to get to the school. we could hear sirens in town but did not know what was going on. then we got the news that my coach's husband, a florida highway patrol officer, was shot. we didn't know all the details. the two teams took a vote and decided to play the games for mrs. sottile, my coach. by the middle of warm up we learned that he had passed. on the way home, we passed through the crime scene. i have never seen such a sight in all my life. there were over 300 police cars in the middle of highway 27 along with a sheriff's tank, sheriff semi-tractor trailers with special ops, airboats, four wheelers, and dozens of news vans. the search for the suspects was still on. police found both suspects by the next morning.

sergeant nicholas g. sottile

on january 16, the day of our soccer districts, the girls' soccer team left school early to attend the funeral service. i have never seen as much community support as i did that day. thousands of people, including officers from all over the country, came to support the fallen troop and his family that day. the governor, charlie crist, spoke along with the head of fhp. reverend cameron, who was best friends with mr. sottile, gave the sermon. it is a memory that will never leave me.

here is our soccer team. hundreds of people drove their cars and came out of the neighborhoods lining us27 to show support. we wrote signs, each of us holding one, that said "we miss you coach" and "we love you mrs. sottile." she followed her husband and gave us a thumbs up as she passed us.

they started a scholarship fund in honor of sgt. sottile for young people attempting to become a fhp trooper. in march the soccer team, along with many other volunteers, is sponsoring a mini children's carnival. proceeds are going towards the scholarship.

on a happier note, i made a catnip mouse for raja. i knit the little thing, stuffed it with catnip and sewed it together.

he loves it. but the first one was not thick enough or sticky enough yarn because he got all the catnip out fast. so i made him another one.

the tail is on the wrong end but raja didn't seem to mind. this one lasted longer.

my doggies are so sweet. look how much they love each other. sadly, sometime, more than sometimes, at least one of them will lay on all my pillows, i will sneak one pillow out, and lay on them very similar to this.

last week mom went to madrona. while she was off having fun without me, i took over with the cooking and made dinner for tom and greg. when they got home from the thirsty camel at the bowling alley, aka "the club", i had a nice home cooked meal ready for them.

homemade salsa, hot enough for tom but just the right amount, the trick was the scotch bonnet pepper.

and here is the dinner. frijoles negros (black beans) and rice, zuccini, homemade tortillas, pork marinaded in mojo and lime sauce with some spicy seasonings, and toppings including my salsa, fat free sour cream, lettuce, and fresh mangoes. yum yum yum.

i have been working on my pink fluff. i haven't had as much time, especially since i picked up an extra class at the college on wednesday nights, so now i have 9 classes. but here is what i have so far.

the color is so vibrant. like being stuck in a pink sunset. i love it.

yesterday was an awesome day. my best friend, monica, moved to virginia almost 2 years ago. i still talk to her a few times a week. i miss her a lot. unfortunately her grandfather passed away this week, so she has been down in west palm beach. but yesterday she was allowed to come up here and visit for a couple hours. it was wonderful but bitter-sweet because it seemed like she was gone faster than she arrived.

the two of us at beef's. monica misses the sweet tea. she says sweet tea is not sweet tea up north. notice the nancy chase whale necklace. i love it.

and now the news that makes yesterday an even more awesome day. i heard back from fsu a couple of months ago. i was accepted but i have been waiting to hear back from uf. it's been torture. then i had the countdown starting thursday night. it had been posted all week friday at 2 pm the notification would be available online. all day i was telling my friends "7 hours 34 minutes", "6 hours 57 minutes", "4 hours 14 minutes", etc. then i find out that the website changed because i am obsessive and look at it daily. it then read that it would be available sometime during the weekend of feb 3-4. i was not a happy camper. i got home and waited, compulsively checking it every few minutes. so getting tired of logging on and off, i began to play backgammon to pass the time, every few minutes refreshing the page. then it wouldn't refresh and i got very excited. so i logged off then back on. the page wasn't available, it was going up. so i checked again and i am now officially a student for the fall of 2007 at the university of florida!!!!!!! i am extremely excited. hopefully today i will go and buy a t-shirt and a hat and stuff. i wouldn't let anyone, including my boyfriend who didn't like this rule, buy anything with a gator emblem on it until i found out so i wouldn't jinx it. but i'm in and i cannot tell you how excited i am.

hope that you enjoy the blog because this post is packed to the brim!!! tootles!