Out Of The Garden

Well, this weekend was the first time me and Phil have ventured out of the area surrounding campus. Sorry, I stand corrected. This is the first time with the Beetle. We took it to the mall and had a look around. It's a pretty big one and isn't that fat away so I have no doubt that we will be visiting it again. The Beetle definitly needs to have a mechanic look at it before we take it too far. On another note, today was the first day in a while that the temperature has been above freezing in a while. It's just above freezing but I'll take what I can get. Well that's about it for now. I'm typing this in my calculus III class and it's about to start so I had better go. Until the next post.

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Location:S Wright St,Urbana,United States

Back To the Swing Of Things

Well, I hope everyone had a good winter break. I know I did but I’m glad to be back. I get bored too easily over long breaks. Not much to talk about. One thing to mention is that I am now the proud owner of a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle.  I drove it back to Champaign from South Carolina and it made it here with some possible minor damage.  I’ve started classes and am fairly happy with all of them . My Calculus III discussion is at 8:oo am  so I don’t know how often I will be attending that.  In fact, I missed it this morning by 20 minutes. Hopefully after a while i will get a hang of it and be able to make all of them. Nothing else to report other than there is snow on the ground and it’s currently raining. Again, hope everyone had a good break. Until next time,

-Joshua

An End To The Great Exodus

First off, I would like to apologize to anyone who has made a habit of reading this blog. I know I’ve neglected it for a while now. Ok, more like a month and a half. Hopefully my absence will be thoroughly explained.

Well, as anyone in college or a relative of someone in college will know, semester final are wrapping up and everyone is on there way home for the winter break. I’ve been home for a few days now. The time between the end of thanksgiving week and the end of finals is possibly the busiest time for any college. Classes need to be wrapped up, finals need to be studied for, taken, and graded.  Things need to be packed to get ready to go home for a month. On top of all of that, you need to enjoy the last few days with friends before you leave.  As you can probably understand, my blog was kind of low on the list of things I needed to get done.

However now that I have the time to sit down and write, I do have a couple of interesting stories to tell.

The first story isn’t much of a story really.  Me and one of my roommates are in the same chemistry class. We both wanted to do really well on the final. We decided to go and study in an IHOP for as long as we could manage on the evening of the last day of classes.  That ended up being around five hours. In that time I consumed three pots of coffee. My roommate drank four. For those of you saying, “Josh, wouldn’t staying up all night hurt your grade?”, the day between the last day of classes and the first day of exams is a free day to study or recover from hangovers or whatever. I spent most of it studying for my Calculus exam that was on the same day as the chemistry. Both of which were on the first day of exams. And if you were wondering, we both got a C on the exam.

The second story is also not much of a story. My appologies for my lousy stroy telling. To celebrate being done with our first semester of college, we decided to go see a local tradition. This guy who calls him self Piano Man plays every Tuesday in a local bar. He takes requests but usually plays songs that are good to sing as a group. We went and saw him and had a generally good time. You can see a video of him I took here below.

Well, that’s really it for now. Hope everyone has a festive holiday season and if I don’t write again soon have a happy New Year.

Halloween Weekend

I know this blog has basically deteriorated into me whining about how hard my course load is. I promise that this post will have nothing like that.  Now, before reading on I have two warnings. One is that this blog will definitely be the longest one to date. Second, some of the events described could be conceived as morally objectionable. I’ll keep everything PG rated but I felt a warning might be appropriate. That being said, the stated purpose of this blog is to describe my experience here at UIUC and I’ll definitely remember this one for a while.

Ok first a little background is needed.  The Illini, the sports team here at UIUC, had  game against the University of Michigan on Halloween. It was expected that we would loose because up until that point we had only won one game. Well, to everyone’s surprise we won. That got everyone on campus excited and that coupled with Halloween lead to our adventure that night.

Me and my roommate had already decided we would hang out with several of his female friends to make sure they stayed relatively safe. Plus, we didn’t feel like staying in on Halloween night, win or lose. So we went to meet up with them.

Turns out that my roommate’s friend had a couple friends who were seniors in high school visiting. They wanted to have the college experience for Halloween.

Anyway, we managed to find somewhere to go for the evening after several phone calls. We headed to this one fraternity thinking everything was good. Turns out the girl/guy in our group was too low for them. A little fast talking eventually got everyone in.

So everyone is in the party having a good time, including me. The girls and most of the guys had decided to partake of the drink of choice at college parties.  Me and my roommate both chose not to.  We aren’t really into that kind of stuff. My roommate was dressed up as a Yeti and I was a hippy in a sweatshirt.

Well, several hours later me, my roommate, his friend, and the two high school friends left to go help someone who had gotten loss during the evening. My roommate’s friend spent a little while with the lost person, who had gotten a little scared and stuff. Anyway, at this point the two high school kids were , well, “having fun”. One of them was having a little fun but the other was having way too much fun if you get my drift. At this point I was struggling to not laugh. We made a pit stop so that the less-fun one could experience the down side of consuming too much of her drink of choice.

At this point it’s one o’clock in the morning and everyone expect the more-fun high school friend want to go to bed. The less-fun one was back to normal and wanted to go to bed too but her friend was ready to head back out and party some more. My roommate’s friend started making some phone calls.

One thing that added to the evening was the fact that the more-fun high school friend had recently broken up with her boyfriend after two years. She was the one who ended it and wanted to move. After having several drinks of her choice she wanted to move on full steam ahead, if you get my drift. She was essentially trying to make out with every cute guy that walked by, excluding myself and my roommate.

After several minutes my roommate’s friend gave up. We headed to a friend’s room in a last ditch effort, but to no avail. All the parties had wound down. At this point me and my roommate headed back to our room and the three girls headed to theirs. About 30 seconds after getting back I fell into my bed, which is no mean feat since it’s a top bunk, and slept for about 11 hours.

That was my Halloween night. Hope everyone had a good and safe night. If the post is a little hard to follow, I’m sorry.  I wanted to avoid using names and, well, I couldn’t remember many names anyway. That’s about it until next time.

Grinding Gears

Hello there everyone. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been really busy but also I haven’t really had anything interesting to write about. Right now I’m taking a break from homework due to my cold. I’ve been feeling pretty cruddy for the last few days. Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow because I have an exam in Electrical Engineering at 8:3o p.m. In addition to that I need to work on a paper too. You see how I have been busy. Problem is I’m just too tired right now to do anything productive.

Anyway, no more complaining. It is definitely Autumn here in Illinois. Me and my roommate and his two friends went to a orchid on Saturday. I got myself a gallon of fresh made Apple Cider. I doubt it will last more than two weeks. It’s pretty cold here but no snow. I can promise that the first snow will have it’s own post here.

Well, other than my cold and the little trip we took nothing really exciting has happened. I just decided to write a post before i went and crawled into bed until dinner. Until next time then.

No Rest For The Wicked

Wow, has it been a busy couple weeks. It seemed like it was just one exam after another for a couple of weeks. By the time I got done with one I had to start studying for another. Some went well, others not so well. But I’m not complaining though. I knew I would have to work a little harder then I did in high school. Not that I actually worked in high school. I just didn't think it would be such a sudden transition. Oh well, I’m keeping my head up above water for now.

Anyway, enough of my complaining. Thinks are picking up around here. Tomorrow starts homecoming week.  At least I think I’m pretty sure it dose. Anyway, next Saturday is the homecoming game.  There are supposed to be floats and stuff. I’ll make sure to get some pictures and put them up somewhere.

I haven’t really had time to do anything besides homework and studying these last few weeks so there isn’t much to write about. One thing I have noticed is that I’ve been getting into my music. My iPod is getting a workout every day. Plus, my clarinet is seeing the light of day again. I’m even considering getting an Electric Cello. I’ll keep you guys posted on that one if it ends up panning out.

Oh, on bit of book keeping. Apparently my hosing account was suspended due to me not logging in for a few weeks. Sorry if anyone tried to get to the site. It should be up and running  no though. I haven’t updated it so if you have seen version 1.0.01 or 1.0.02 then your up to date. I have gotten little bit of work done on the next version though. I’m not going to say too much about that though. You’ll hear when the next version is finalized.

That’s about it for now. Until next time I’m out of here.

Weekends Are When the Week Really Begins

Ok, I FINALLY have time to sit down and write a post. It has been a very long, very stressful, and very tiring week for me this week. My first exam was today in Calculus. On top of studying for that I had to study for a quiz in Chemistry, do the chemistry homework, and everything else that seems to pop up during the week. The more time I spend here the more it becomes apparent that weekend are the only time I can actually catch up on work and my various leisure activities.

Luckily I have found a place on campus that I con go when I need to work. The Granger Engineering Library is in the middle of all my classes. It’s pretty quite so I can concentrate on my work. Plus, If someone is being annoying the place is HUGE so I can just go somewhere else. During the week it’s open 24 hours. It opens at 1o:00 am on Monday and closes at 1o:00 pm on Friday. It’s open 10:00 am to 10:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday so I can go there on the weekends too. I have a feeling with all the stuff that is coming up I will be spending a lot of time in there.

Well, that’s about it for now. The poll closes tomorrow at 11:59 pm so if you haven’t voted yet go do it now. The site address is listed on the left hand side of my profile page on Facebook. Until next time.