Jovers

I have to remember to write the date correctly now.

My New Year’s Eve wasn’t super exciting, but it was fun. Steven’s girlfriend came over, and then I had a couple of friends that came over as well, including Andrew. Steven’s girlfriend doesn’t come over often, so it was fun to hang out with her. We started the evening off by watching Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a movie I hadn’t seen before but really enjoyed. And then we played our annual tradition of The Farming Game, despite the naysayers. For the first time in about five years… I lost. To win, you have to accumulate $250,000 in assets and Steven ended up winning, though by the end we were all donating him money for him to win, haha. It’s a great game.

Andrew and my friend, Emily, and I headed out to a chain diner for a late night snack at about 2:00 AM and got some shakes and fries. It was really fun because I haven’t seen Emily in such a long time, since I’m off at college and she got a part-time job, so she works a lot. It’s the first time I’ve seen her all break, actually. But I hope to grab a bite with her again before we leave to go back.

It had snowed quite a bit over night, so the cars were all covered with snow and ice. Andrew’s such a gentlemen; he scraped Emily’s car for her. <3

Looking back at last year, I had three goals: to read more, to write more, and to remember what was important. I did read more books in 2012 than 2011, thought I didn’t meet my specific goal of reading all of the books that I own, but let’s face it; I didn’t even think that goal was really plausible because I just keep buying books. I didn’t write as many posts in 2012 as in 2011, but I did do better in NaNoWriMo this year, so I think that is about the same. As for remembering what’s important, it’s impossible to forget all the friends and family that I love. <3

This year, I can only really think of three goals:

Read 52 books this year. I’ve not done it before, but I know I can do it if I make time. I love reading, and by making this goal, hopefully I’ll just force myself to make room for it!
Have a 3.5+ GPA this semester. I got all my grades in for last semester and I got all A’s and an A-! Woot! I was pretty proud, considering my French class was hell; I’m not really sure how I pulled that off. My overall GPA was a 3.9, so I think that having a 3.5+ is very plausible as long as I just keep focused and work hard.
To blog more. It’s not a big issue if I fail this one, I would just like to keep my blog a more active. I tend to disappear and then sporadically update with five new posts in one week. So I suppose consistency would fall in there, too. I was pretty all over in 2012, so let’s hope this year’s a bit better with 2013. (Though, I’m still trying to get my time management all figured out with college, so we’ll see how this goes, haha.)

If you haven’t noticed already, I’ve given the site a bit of a revamp, to celebrate bringing in the new year. I’ve cleaned the site up a bit by deleting useless pages and I have a new simple and clean theme which I really love. I really liked my last one, but I was getting tired of it and needed a change of scenery. I just like the crisp, organized, cleanliness of it. Amidst my life of chaos, haha.

Aaaand I’ve finally gotten around to doing something I’ve been meaning to do forever: I’ve added the first and second journal of my trip to France and Italy!! You can find them under the visitor section (or I will be linking to them). My travelblog that I had intended to create just fell through; I just didn’t have enough time for it and for this site. So I’m going to be uploading them bit by bit, and hopefully will have them all up by this summer! I’ve added a bit of an introduction for those that aren’t quite sure what I’m talking about, or for those who’ve forgotten. I already shared Journal #1 with you all summer of 2011, but that was quite a bit ago, so I’ve re-uploaded that one. I added Journal #2, which is completely new and exciting!

I hope you all enjoy them and I’ve love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to leave comments on them! I think that in the future I’ll do some kind of journal type things with my trip to Greece/Turkey/London, or maybe favorite memories. I haven’t decided yet; no one may even read these journals, so we’ll just see when the time comes!

I feel great after getting all of this done today. Tomorrow I work in the morning with my mom, and then I’m hoping to catch up on some blogs and catch some tweaks on here that I may have missed. And lots of reading. :love: I’ve finished the book Graceling by Kristin Cashore (which I would highly recommend) and I’ve started the sequel, Bitterblue, so I’m excited to read and finish that tomorrow!

I had some pretty big changes this year, and as I am a person that generally doesn’t handle change very well, I think I had a really good, and successful year.

For starters, I graduated from high school. I never doubted that I wouldn’t, but knowing that in the coming fall I wouldn’t be going to the same place I had been going for the past twelve years of my life was pretty staggering. Also knowing that I wouldn’t see a fourth of the people that had surrounded me for the past twelve years of my life – both a comforting and a scary thought. I was moving out of this little bubble called high school and moving into the Real World.

I got my first job, my first real job. I’ve had hodge-podge jobs with babysitting or raking the leaves or helping my mom clean houses (she cleans as a part time job), but I got my first real, I-now-have-to-pay-taxes job. Which was pretty scary, too, at first. And while I knew people were jerks, I got to experience first-hand the vast stupidity of humanity working at a hotel, checking in douche-bag businessmen. Ahem. But even when I was being yelled at for not having a smoking room available, I was able to put a smile on my face and suck it up, knowing that this was not my life, and that the person standing in front of me was simply a spoiled brat who obviously never worked with people before.

I got my wisdom teeth pulled, which was pretty big for Miss Wuss. It’s something that I worried about, a lot, and it turned out to not be even that bad. I don’t remember a thing about the surgery, got a bit sick afterwards, and passed the next week in varying states of consciousness with yogurt and smoothies.

I started my first semester as college, and thus, my independence. When I was back at home, every problem that I ever encountered, there were always my parents and my friends and other authority figures that I could just shove the problem off to and have them handle it, or tell me exactly what to do. But I didn’t have that anymore. When I got a bill in my e-mail saying I owed my school $4,000, I had to walk over to the financial aid office and deal with it myself. (Consequently, I probably lost about $1,000 because of it, but we’re working on my aggressive tactics.) When I was enrolled in a class that I already had credit for, I had to deal with it. When UMKC had no records of any of my transcripts, I had to figure it out. And now, I feel a lot better about myself, knowing that I can handle most of the things that life throws my way. I’ve grown up a lot this year.

I moved four hours away from home, which is probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I love my family, and I love my friends, and I love the place that I love, and the familiarity of it all. I moved to Kansas City, to a dorm room, with a person that I have never met before in my life. Which at first, was absolutely awful. I was so terribly lonely that I wanted to call it quits and just go home; but after numerous phone calls home, and pushing myself out of my comfort zone millions of times, I made friends. And I’m starting to actually like Kansas City. (And I love my roommate.)

And another really big thing for me: I now like Mac ‘n Cheese. In fact, as I’m typing this, I’m eating a bowl full. I used to not like it when I was little, for whatever reason, so I haven’t tried it in probably a good ten or twelve years. While I was at college this semester, some of my friends had a “dorm cooking show,” where they cooked for us a variety of things that we could make ourselves in the dorm, and then we ate it all. It was really fun, and everything was delicious, including this spin on mac ‘n cheese that they had! I tried it mainly out of courtesy, not thinking I would like it… now I am addicted. I can’t believe I’ve missed out on the cheesy goodness that this is all of my life! So the past couple of weeks I’ve been home, I have been taking full of advantage of being able to cook for myself. I think I’ve had this about four times just this week, haha. This is huge! My meals are now open to so much more variety with noodles and cheese!

So 2012 has been a really big year for me with lots of change and overall growth as an individual, and I’m really excited to see what 2013 will bring. My mom’s birthday is on the first, so we always have friends and some family over not only for New Year’s but for her birthday as well. I am so looking forward to more junk food and spending some more time with friends and family. Happy New Year’s Eve everyone!

Hey there, 2013

It Was a Good One, 2012