So the title of this journal is Yay! for several reasons, chiefly (man, I can never spell that word right on the first try) it's winter break (Yay Christmas!) and I GOT ALL A's this semester!!!!!!! I'm so excited! I'm not trying to brag, that's not why I'm excited, but I haven't been able to get that since freshman year, and with 18 credit hours I was worried about how it would turn out (especially Shakespeare, where my first draft of the term paper got a very *detailed* critique - but it worked! Yay! I'm so relieved.

And another yay - I just finished the final round of the Amaranthine Tea Kettle contest, the amazingly fun original-character tournament into which I entered my character Idesta. I joined in the summer for a chance to develop Idesta, whose story I'd started but not gotten far on, but it ended up being so much more - through the contest, I've been able to see some truly stunning works of many dA writers and artist, as well as toss Idesta together with some unusual situations and unique characters and see what she'd do! The answers sometimes surprised me - but now I know more about Idesta than I thought I did. And that contest - so much fun!!!! And so creative. All the combatants rock!

I also just got a car, again, after the accident! Yay for insurance - they really came through, which was wonderful, and I just got the car today, the same type as I had before, though it'll take me a while before I'm comfortable with driving again. I'm still jumpy riding in cars, and I think all trucks are going to look ten times bigger and faster to me for a while still... but I have a month to get re-adjusted to being behind the wheel. I can do that. *hopes*

And YAY my boyfriend is awesome! He just got me the Metallica CD "Master of Puppets" for Christmas... despite being an avid Metallica fan for a while, I had actually never bought that album (just heard a couple of the songs - I'd pretty much stuck to the Black album before). It's great, so far! Wow, the guitar on those tracks... unbelievable.

Next week one of my college friends and I are going to start work on a new story, a collab between us called Excellens Fortuna, a sort of coming-of-age discovery-adventure narrative set in a utopia-turned dystopia where things... definitely aren't what they seem. Wow, that's a lot of hyphens. It should be a lot of fun - we both created the characters, he's writing the plot, and I'm writing the style/description. So that should be a fun project!

Speaking of projects, I'm working on a huge collage of Obama material - covers from magazines, parts of posters, photos, articles, etc - that we're putting together in celebration of the historic election. My mom had the idea and got the materials, and I thought it was an awesome idea! We both volunteered for the campaign, and admire Obama immensely, so we were so excited when he won, and wanted to make something to commemorate the election. I'll probably post it here when I'm done with it - it's turning out well!

And wow, I saw IKEA for the first time today. We went shopping for some drawer organizers, and wow... my mom described it as a "zoo for furniture," and that's pretty accurate - but also, a museum for modern interior decoration. It was incredible! The creativity of the designers and the arrangers is amazing. The only part of the experience I didn't like was that I was walking around the huge expanse of the store wearing heels... which I'm not used to. At all. After a while, I thought my feet were going to liquefy and be forge into a Barbie-foot mold. No wonder all Barbies have that pained expression. But aside from that, the store was awesome! It must be fun to arrange everything there, and create the designs. I love the names, too. They all sound like aliens. If IKEA was a musical, it would have to draw from both Beauty and the Beast (yay for singing furniture) and Star Trek. It's got the chairs down already.

And I started exercising! Seriously, now, not just walk-around-campus or wander-into-the-campus-gym exercising. I hope I stick with it - I want to! My arms are noodles at the moment - I need muscle

And yay for the bookstore! I just got "How to Read Novels Like a Professor" by Foster, and couldn't put it down. It's such a great run-through of literary theory, the last two centuries' great works, what makes a novel a novel (at the end of the book, still wasn't sure) and all told in a funny and insightful narrative that added about 25 new books to my to-read list. Yay for break - I'll be able to read them!

Though I should go to bed now I just emerged from that book in about the same way as people come out of a movie theatre in early evening: "Wait, it's dark now? It's only... *checks watch* - Oh. I'm disoriented..."

Hope everyone else is having a good break too (or if yours hasn't started yet, that it starts soon ) Have fun!