Christmas in Boston!

Family in Boston!

Walking in the blizzard!

Ice skating at the frog pond!

Grace

Amazing Grace: My Chains are Gone


Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

My chains are gone, I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, amazing grace

The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures

My chains are gone, I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, amazing grace

My chains are gone, I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, amazing grace

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow
The sun forbear to shine
But God who called me here below
Will be forever mine, will be forever mine
You are forever mine

Sustainafriends

I love my sustainafriends!

Show-me sustainability conference committee!

Sustain Mizzou Great Outdoors camp out!

 

EcoAward!

Tiger Tailgate Recycling!

AASHE Conference in Denver!

SkyMall

The best part about flying is... SKYMALL!!!

Check out these gems:

Star Wars toaster!!!

DISCO SHOWER!!!

Tell me these don't look like sperm shoes.

Test Neck

Not funny.  I hate test neck.  Every time i take a test, by the end of the hour or hour and a half, my neck is so stiff!  Today, with 5 minutes to go on my prices test, i turned my head to stretch out my neck and a sharp surge of pain shot up through my neck.  It still hurts.  I think i may look into an post-test masseuse for the rest of the semester...

French Finance

This morning I was studying for my 11am test and was soooo tired, even though I went to bed before midnight!  I studied up until I left for my 9:30am finance class.  I flew on my bike to class, got to the classroom, and read the sign on the door reminding me that class was in a computer lab in a different building today.  Dang-it.

I got to the computer lab and slipped into an open seat at the back of the lab next to a guy from France who's in my class.  Whenever I meet other people from either France, Germany, or Ecuador (the countries that our foreign exchange students are from), I really want to hang out with them, so I was inwardly happy that I'd get to talk to my french classmate :)

He helped me get up the correct excel doc, since I was 5 minutes late, and then the journey began to try to keep up with our teacher and his rocket speed at "teaching" us how to calculate the finances for a project analysis.  I helped my classmate with several formulas, but somehow we got off and weren't getting the same answers as our teacher.  Eventually it became ridiculous: the speed my teacher was "teaching," the miniscule size of the font on the projector from the back of the room, and the fact that neither of us were grasping the big picture of the project analysis.  I couldn't help but laugh; that kind of laugh that says "this is ridiculous and there's not much I can do about it cause I have to peace out in 2 minutes to get to my test on time."

My classmate asked our teacher at the end of class about one of the rows on the excel sheet and he asked him if he had a class right after this so he could give him some one-on-one.  Because he's French.  Haha.  Oh, goodness.  I needed the help, too, but tests were calling.  Maybe I'll get to meet up with frenchie again so he can set my excel sheet straight.

Roast for lunch!

Umbrellas

Haha! It started raining when I went to bed last night and rained until I got out of class this afternoon at 2:40pm. I love it when I get to listen to the rain though my wide open window all night and the thunder wakes me up through is crashes and shakes of the house :) This morning I was walking to class with my galoshes, rain jacket, and broken umbrella and I looked around at all of the little people walking around with different colors, sizes, and qualities of umbrellas and started laughing. Haha umbrellas are so weird. It made me wonder who on earth thought it'd be a good idea to put a bowl-shaped sewn piece of cloth on the end of a stick. Here's some funny history and info about the umbrella, or "brolly" as they say in NZed, from my good friend Kip from Wikipedia:

An umbrella or parasol (also called a brolly, rainshade, sunshade, gamp or bumbershoot) is a canopy designed to protect against rain or sunlight. The term parasol usually refers to an item designed to protect from the sun; umbrella refers to a device more suited to protect from rain. Often the difference is the material; some parasols are not waterproof. Parasols are often meant to be fixed to one point and often used with patio tables or other outdoor furniture. Umbrellas are almost exclusively hand-held portable devices; however, parasols can also be hand-held. Umbrellas can be held as fashion accessories.

The word umbrella comes from the Latin word umbra, meaning shade or shadow (the Latin word, in turn, derives from theAncient Greek ómbros [όμβρος].) Brolly is a slang word for umbrella, used often in Britain, New Zealand, Australia, andSouth Africa; Bumbershoot is a fanciful Americanism from the late 19th century.[2]

In written records, the oldest reference to a collapsible umbrella dates to the year 21 A.D., when Wang Mang (r. 9–23) had one designed for a ceremonial four-wheeled carriage.[11] The 2nd century commentator Fu Qian added that this collapsible umbrella of Wang Mang's carriage had bendable joints which enabled them to be extended or retracted.[12] A 1st century collapsible umbrella has since been recovered from the tomb of Wang Guang at the Korean site of the Lelang Commandery, illustrated in a work by Harada and Komai.[13] However, the Chinese collapsible umbrella is perhaps a concept that is yet centuries older than Qin's tomb. Zhou Dynasty bronze castings of complex bronze socketed hinges with locking slides and bolts—which could have been used for parasols and umbrellas— were found in an archeological site of Luoyang, dated to the 6th century BCE.[13]

Umbrellas continue to be actively developed. In the U.S., so many umbrella-related patents are being filed that the U.S. Patent Office employs four full-time examiners to assess them. As of 2008, the office registered three thousand active patents on umbrella-related inventions.[18] Nonetheless, Totes, the largest American umbrella producer, has stopped accepting unsolicited proposals. Its director of umbrella development was reported as saying that while umbrellas are so ordinary that everyone thinks about them, "it’s difficult to come up with an umbrella idea that hasn’t already been done."[18]