Well, I'm a little disappointed that more people didn't answer my movie questions. Which means no one really reads my blog I'm guessing. Sad. On another topic, and really the only reason I'm writing, is my senior honors project. I had my first meeting with my committee today, which left me stressed, nerve-wracked, and oddly exhausting. We covered so much that now I feel not just overwhelmed but a little lost. Which I shouldn't be, because this is my project. I feel like I was bombarded with ideas. I guess that's good, because it's helping me focus and work things out and figure out a timeline, and yikes, that was the scariest part because we figured out that I need to have most of my research done by early October. In case you hadn't noticed, that's in about 2 weeks. The reason for that is I need to apply to the IRB to be approved for the survey portion of the project. They make sure I'm doing everything correctly and appropriately, and luckily one of my committee members just happens to be on that so that should help get me approved! I need to do the surveying this semester, because apparantly analysis could take a month. Plus then there's the actual paper writing, which I'm now terrified to do. I was going to start it and work on it in portions throughout this semester, j-term, and then finish once I had my data analysis done, but now I'm no longer sure that I'll even have time to write-I barely have time to research! Well, now that the meeting is done, and we've parted, and I'm walking with one of my committee members (the one on the IRB board actually) she asks me if I've given any thought to publishing this when I was done! That was a shock. I admit, the thought did cross my mind briefly (and I mean briefly, 1/2 a second tops) but I haven't really given it much thought at all. I mean, I've barely started this, I'm not entirely sure of some of the directions it might take, and the end product is far, far away at this point. Publication is not something I'm considering at this point. Still, it was extremely flattering-I've never really ever considered having something of mine published, and pretty much all on my own too. Who knows? Maybe when it's done, if I like it, I'll see what steps I have to take. I'm sure my committee, if they like it too, would be happy to help me. Again, it's a ways off yet. We'll just see what the next few months bring.

“Do or do not... there is no try.”

What is....

Your all-time favorite movie? And, your favorite movie in the following categories:
Drama
Comedy
Action/Adventure
Romance (or Romantic Comedy)
Horror
Animated
Based on a book
With Tom Hanks
Older than 1965

Here's my list-
If I was forced to pick an all time favorite or be killed, I'd guess I'd probably say Say Anything. However, I have many others that come really close. Hmm. Maybe actually Garden State. One of those two. So, the rest:

Drama-either A Beautiful Mind or Gaslight

Comedy-Better Off Dead

Action/Adventure-probably the Lord of the Rings movies

Romance/Romantic Comedy-Say Anything, Return to Me

Horror-I hate horror. Nothing.

Animated-Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast, or the Shrek movies. Or Mulan. I really love animated movies.

Based on a Book-most based on a book aren't that great, or I've never read the book. One that I know is based on a book that I really liked (but never read the book) is Holes. Otherwise, Pride and Prejudice (the one with Kiera Knightly)-it rocks.

With Tom Hanks-not unexpectedly, Forrest Gump. He just does such a great job, and the movie itself is unbelievably good.

Older than 1965-It's a Wonderful Life, or Gaslight.

So, I know I said about 50 movies for about 8 categories, but it's hard to choose. I love movies. Please, do a better job than me and try to only pick one for each.

My little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave. So my mom had to take him to the hospital. My grandma dropped acid this morning, and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins. So it's sort of a family crisis.

It's Just That Kind of Day

Do you ever have days where you seriously feel like you can't do anything right? This is my second day in a row like that. It's not even like most of the things I've done have been stupid, or gotten screwed up, or gone wrong in any way. In fact, I've been a rather intelligent person the past couple of days. However, there have been a few screw-ups throughout, more than usual, that have just made me feel either like an idiot or just bad about something, generally speaking myself. First of all, yesterday I made chicken parmesan and some of it ended up on the floor. Not sure how, it started on Eric's plate. Today it was like word vomit, I just couldn't seem to shut up at times. Plus, I forgot to turn my phone off silent, so I missed Maria's calls, and then made the mistake of calling her back at 11:20. Duh-just because you're up late, doesn't mean other people are. Maybe I'll blame it on Eric-"It's not that late" (Again, this is at almost 11:30). So I listened to him instead of my better instinct-who stays up past 11 on a Tuesday? Especially if they have class the next day and are probably seriously stressed? So I feel bad about that-not only did I miss her calls but I woke her up. Great. That's not even everything, but I feel like a big enough loser. At least my job interview went ok. Where at, you ask? Underwater Adventures. Yep, Underwater Adventures at the Mall of America. Not the most appealing job in the world, but it would be decent pay. Not the greatest hours either, but considering Eric and I need jobs, if I get hired I'll probably just have to suck it up and deal. Oh, and to make me feel worse, I practically had to tell them I didn't have any clue what I'm going to do once I'm out of college. Talk about being a loser. I did get a free pass inside though, so that was cool.

Next post-something happy. Hopefully. Geez, I'm married, you'd think I'd be walking on stars. Or is it clouds? Whatever. I am, by the way. Once I come home. It's when I have to see the world and think about life and whatnot that things start to go downhill. Mostly it's just been really hard adjusting to being back in school, but not being at school. I have to be even more motivated, which is hard, because hey, I'm a newlywed. Plus neither Eric nor I wants to get a job, but we're sortof being forced into that position, which again, makes things hard. I like being married, I like having time to spend with my husband in our new apartment, I like us having fun with people together as a married couple. I don't like school or work or paying for things. But it all comes together in one great big package, doesn't it?

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

Senior Honors Project

As promised, here is a synopsis of my senior honors project. This is something that will go on my transcript, and it counts as a 4-credit class. Which means that I'm paying over 3 grand to do a project. And dang it, that means I'm going to do a good job. This is basically all on my own, so instead of having a professor teaching me something, I have a project advisor and two other committee members who work with me throughout the semester (and next semester, because actually it's basically a year long project, although we register for it for the fall semester, and then just finish it in the spring. That's actually when all the presenting to the community is done though, so a good portion of the work), keeping track of my work, guiding me, giving me direction, critiquing my project, and whatnot. They're actually the ones who say if I "pass" or not-basically, they have to evaluate all my work and the final project and say whether or not I did a good enough job for it to get a grade. I'm pretty sure we do actually get a grade for it too. Anyway. They do the final analysis, that's what's really important. But they help me through the whole thing too, so although I'm on my own, it's like I have a team sortof.

My project is largely theological, so my project advisor is also my theology advisor (the other faculty members are a pscyhology professor and my philosophy advisor). What I'm going to do is research various teachings on sexuality/sexual ethics/sex in general in the Catholic traditon (not past teachings, more of what the Church teaches now), as well as study the relationship between the Church teachings and the believer. What this basically means is studying not just what the Church teaches, but what the Church actually expects from the members of the church, what their teachings mean in a real-life context. That makes it a little complicated, because they (church leaders) don't just say, hey, this is what we say, this is what you do. That's largely how people think of it (it's mainly how I thought about it until my advisor helped me see otherwise) so that's going to add another dimension to my project. Finally, I'm going to do some sort of survey of members of the faith asking about their actual practices (obviously, this is going to be a completely anonymous study). Along with those questions, I'm going to include questions about how often they go to church, how much education they've had in their faith, how long they've been a member of the church, etc. Also how they understand the church's sexual ethics (as giving permission/forbidding certain things, or more as guidelines, or a theory of love/relationships, etc). That will help me analyze if experience/education in their faith makes any difference in how they practice it, and if the church is getting their teachings across to church members the way they want it to, or if they do a poor job of teaching and explaining not just the teachings themselves but what they actually expect from the believers. So, that's my project, with many different components, and I thought at one point that it wasn't going to be extensive enough. And I've narrowed it down quite a bit-I was going to look at multiple different religions, instead of just Catholicism, and then realized how difficult that would be. So instead of doing multiple religions, I'm just doing Catholicism, but I'm also going to survey either members of all other faiths besides Catholicism and use those as a control group, having Catholics be my variable obviously, or survey people who consider themselves non-religious. Not sure about that yet. Same questions and everything will apply, obviously.

That's my project-if anyone has any comments, questions, or articles/books that might be helpful for my project, that would be wonderful.

"Thank you, but I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds."

School

And another school year has started. Actually, as far as the forseeable future goes, it's my last year of school. Weird, now that I actually think about it. For as long as I can remember, which is pretty long, come September I've headed off to school, and this is my last one. Well, maybe. Chances are eventually I'll go to grad school, but as far as I can tell, it won't be next year.

I only have 3 real classes this year, but I'm actually taking 17 credits, the most I ever have. That's because I'm registered for a senior honors project which counts as 4 credits and goes on our transcript (so I better come up with a cool title that looks good) and a one credit gym class. What a joke-I'm taking relaxation, and today for class we walked down to the river. We haven't even done anything. Ironically, we had to buy a $60 book on stress management, to which Eric asked me "doesn't paying so much for a book for a gym class just stress you out more?" And it does, it does. Still, I've actually found it kindof intriguing so far. It's really easy reading too so I don't really care. My 3 real classes are logic, which I think I will do well in as long as I do the homework and pay attention in class (so far it's pretty easy, but I think it will get semi-challenging), a senior seminar type class called Utopia/Dystopia for my philosophy major (he was expecting about 6 people to take the class and we have nearly 20, most of whom I'm sure aren't philosophy majors. Lame-for some reason it really disappoints me. I was really hoping for a small, more intimate class setting), and the mission and identity of Jesus Christ, which is, as I'm sure you guessed, a theology class. The senior seminar and the theo class are both night classes, so I only have one real day class, plus my gym class which only goes for the first 1/2 of the semester. My theo class is only a 200-level class, but I think it's going to be the most work. 3 tests and a final, an exegesis paper (I'm glad I've already had experience with that!) but that's not even what's going to make it that hard-we already had 3 or 4 assignments tonight (I already lost track, great) and there will be papers and assignments to hand in every week, plus what looks like a lot of reading. I don't know why I think it will be so hard, I'm a senior in college for crying out loud, I'm used to this. I don't know, maybe she just overwhelmed me with the 8 million handouts she gave us tonight, most of which were things we need to do for next week. And with words like christology and exegesis getting thrown around like they're the words "the" and "and", who wouldn't get a little stressed? Good thing I have that relaxation class to keep me sane...I really do have to stay motivated though, what with being married and off campus and a real life outside of school this year, and like I said, even though I only have 3 real classes, I have my senior honors project which is entirely on my own and is supposed to be the equivalent of a 4-credit class. Yikes. Good luck to me. Good luck to anybody else in school too!

So, I know I quit doing song lyrics at the end of my posts. However, since I am somewhat of a movie buff, or at the very least I just enjoy watching movies, and since Eric and I started Netflix, so I will hopefully be watching many more new movies, I've decided to do movie quotes at the end of my posts for you all to guess at. Or just enjoy. Or look up the movie and watch it yourself. Whichever.

"You've got to drag yourself into the 70's"

Married Life

Well, as everybody knows (or should know) I'm married now. 2 1/2 weeks now. Wow. Took a lot of time off from blogging, from talking to people, from basically life in general to spend some quality time with my husband, which is still weird to say. We went on a short honeymoon to a bed and breakfast and then to his parents cabin. It was so great to have no responsibilities and nothing to do. Very relaxing. Unfortunately, once we came back we had what seems like endless responsibilities and too much to do. Mostly, going to about 50 stores and unpacking our apartment. It's all done now, everything is put away and it looks like a real home, which is really nice. And we have groceries, which is always good. Now school has started which is depressing me a lot more than it should. I've always looked forward to going back to school, but not this year. Now it just means less time with Eric and more work to do. And now that I've mentioned work, it also means that Eric and I really need to find jobs fast or we're not going to be able to buy those groceries...crappy.

But since this is the first blog in a while, and since I've been married, I'll write about happier things and then the next one will be depressing. Oh, but first-does anybody know if I can change my blog site since my name has changed, but still keep this blog? I'm hesitant to change anything for fear of having to change everything, so help would be great.

Now, onto the wedding. Or rather, the weekend of the wedding. It seriously felt like I got to celebrate for 4 days straight. The first day, Thursday, was the bachelorette party. It was so much fun seeing some friends I haven't seen in awhile, and we all had a really great time at the casino/hotel. Gina even stayed up past 12, which amazed us all. Once we got back on Friday, it was wedding preparation time. A bunch of us, mainly my wonderful sister-in-law Laura, worked on making all of our flowers. She made all the bouquets (with help from Theresa I think) including my own, which turned out fantastic. All the flowers were just beautiful, and I now know how to make a boutinierre, even though I don't know how to spell it. We also had manicures that afternoon, and then very shortly after that the rehearsal, which went pretty well. I started to get very nervous at it, but luckily it was short and then we got to go eat pizza and just chat with everyone. I feel like I hardly had to do anything at all because I was the bride, which meant that I just got to enjoy myself and have a good time with all the guests. It was even better the next day, obviously, because it was the wedding! My hair turned out perfect, and even though there were a lot of us, we got done within an hour. The only thing that maybe could be considered not perfect about the whole day was that it rained, but honestly, I didn't even care. There weren't really any outdoor pictures that we wanted, so it was ok. Plus now apparantly Eric and I will be really prosperous. Yeah right. Anyway, back to after the hair appointments. At this point people were setting up the reception hall, and since I had no part in that I don't know how it went, but I heard it was ok, and everything looked beautiful when we got there so that's really all that mattered to me. It was so great to have so many people helping us, not just with that but with everything. My personal attendent had her boyfriend with her, and they drove one of my other friends to the wedding, so they were all there really early and they all did a lot to help out, especially with taking pictures and whatnot. There was kindof a lot of waiting between getting my hair done and getting ready at church, which kindof sucked because it was mostly just boring. Even after I got ready, I felt like I was just sitting around a lot, waiting to get pictures taken. It was fun getting ready though, with all of my bridesmaids and friends and stuff. I love my dress, and I feel like I really did look perfect. Pictures went really fast, but even still, my jaw hurt so much from smiling! It was fun though-I can't wait to get them back (any day now) and see how they turned out!

Once the ceremony started, everything went really fast. At least it did not that it's 2 1/2 weeks later. Then it didn't seem that fast, except for the vows. That seemed like the fastest part of the whole thing. All of a sudden it was done, and I was thinking "that's it? just like that and now it's already done?" It was kindof sad actually, being over so fast, since that was really the most important part. But, after that we were married, and it was kindof fun to sit up on the altar staring out at everybody. Except for knowing that everybody was out there staring back at us, so I had to look perfect and happy and not fidget, although I guess at some parts I looked tired. I felt tired-whenever I kept busy I was fine, but once I sat down and had nothing to do I felt really tired, and I think Eric did too. Once we got to the receiving line and then off to the reception though, then there wasn't really any sitting down (well, except for dinner, but we got up and down a lot to kiss so it didn't really feel like sitting). We took a few more pictures, chatted with a few people, made sure everything was running on time but not ahead because we had to wait for Mom and Melinda, and then sat down to eat our delicious dinner. It really was good-better than I was really expecting it to be. Plus I was starving! I ate my whole plate, some of Eric's bread, and then he got me a second helping of salad, so I'm not sure how Gina only was able to eat a few bites at her wedding, because even with the getting up and down to kiss I ate a lot. And really, for some reason I don't feel like we got up to kiss that much. Maybe no one wanted to see us kiss. I thought it would be kindof awkward, kissing in front of so many family and friends, but it wasn't that bad. I wasn't expecting to do it at church though, but Father Zehren made us. He did a great job too-everybody was complimenting us on how nice the ceremony was. Actually, everybody complimented us on how nice everything was. It made me feel good-obviously, I thought everything was fantastic, but then again, it was my own wedding, so to have so many people saying such nice things to us felt really good.

The reception was a blast! It was kindof weird doing the first dance and the father-daughter dance, because the whole time you know that people are watching you, but it was nice too. And Eric and I danced plenty together the rest of the night without as many people watching (and with more people on the dance floor) so that was nice too. I danced most of the night, and Eric talked to people most of the night, so a lot of the time we weren't together, but it was great to celebrate with all my friends and so many family members. And it's always fun to watch people dance, or funny anyway. I didn't have a chance to talk to everybody, but I did talk to a lot of people, and if you were on the dance floor chances are I probably danced with you. I really feel good about the way everything went-it really was a pretty perfect day. I couldn't have asked for a better wedding. We loved it, it seems like everybody else did too, everybody was so helpful, and things ran so smoothly. We are so grateful to everybody and to our families for helping and for making our day so great. And now we're married, and very happy. Soon we want to have people over for a house-warming party, especially our families, but we're probably going to have to throw 2 or 3 because our apartment isn't big enough to hold that many people! We're probably going to do a friends one and a family one, but if anybody is in the area and just wants to come over, they are more than welcome to! We are so excited to have people over to see our place, and we're kindof missing all our families right now (at least I am) so just give us a call if you want to come over, or if (this is mostly for the people at home-well, my old home, mom and dad's) if you guys are doing anything and want to invite us, that might be nice....

Well, this post has run on for much longer than I thought, but I wanted to put a post up about the wedding at least. If you want to see pictures, not the one's Linda took but just various ones, I now have 3 albums up on facebook. I was going to do just one, but there's a stupid limit on how many pictures you can put in an album. Go check them out though, and look for another post soon.