Before the monotony...

While most students were enjoying their last few days of Christmas break in their familial homes, Brett and I were left alone with maybe 10 other girls to roam the halls here in Hart Hall. It was nice for the first couple days, to sleep in past the noon hour without shrieks or loud thumping down the hallway. But after waking up, our bodies finally filled with rest, we decided to get busy having fun before it was time to return to the monotonous days of lectures, the hard stares at the whiteboard trying to read what the prof is writing but can't because the marks from the previous class haven't been fully erased, the agonizing hike up the hill to get to lunch and the dorm, the pouring over books (wait, I did that?? --scratch that---), the uneasiness in our stomachs after dining at the cafeteria and eating leftovers from 3 days ago, as well as the 3am bedtime.....before returning to all that, Brett and I decided to seize the days! Here's what happened:










the epitome of Tennessee










Brett and I went on a picnic on Friday because it was so warm. Notice we're in t-shirts and I'm wearing shorts. It was 70 degrees outside!!














Four days later...it was snowing: 23 degrees.










Brett and I played Scrabble with the suitemates. If you've played Scrabble before, you know there's only ONE "Z" and ONE "X" and ONE "Q"....? Yeah, well I drew them ALL! And had them at the same time. So the game got kind of tricky. Brett and I were playing with two English intellects, so we decided to be on the same team and share letters and help each other out. It was TEAMWORK!! What's wrong with that? Well, the other girls didn't understand that, so they threw the game! And we won!! We then went on to build a tower out of the Scrabble tiles and holders!









We have some spare time to rearrange our room. This is the before shot...But before we could get to the "after" finished product, we dropped the bed frame a couple times, I ran over Brett's toes twice, I dropped the metal bed spring from six feet up, among a few other things.







This is close to the finished product. Brett is moving the cables and wires around the bed. As you can see from this picture, the person on the top loft does not have an easy way up. That person is me. While I am quite agile, I like to think as agile as a gazelle, lifting my leg six feet up and hoisting myself using pure strength is near impossible without having the loft topple over on me. So Brett and I have figured out one way: while she's awake, she raises her knees up and I step on her knees and up into my bed. However, when she's asleep, I can't wake her up everytime...so I've learned to straddle her bed, step on the windowsill and up onto the loft. The first night after I was finally settled in, I turned to face the open room and was met with a whirling gust of wind. This wind was coming from the air vent which was directly across from me. It's not always the warmest air, and it was hard for me to sleep while feeling like I was in a tornado. Brett rigged our vent with some cardboard and duct tape to force the air to blow down into the room. I sleep much better now.


This is just one of the amazingly gorgeous sunsets we've been experiencing down here. Check out the awesome clouds! And yes the open spots in the clouds with the sun were REALLY that bright!