I liks too reed buuk.

I have cravings these days.

Not for chocolate (though always appreciated), not for sleep, not even for things of a sexual nature (believe it or not). No - I have cravings for a great book. I want to start reading a book right now, and get so immersed in it that I lose sleep over it. I want this book to be so engaging that I must walk down the street reading it. I want this book to grab hold of me and pull me to a completely different universe where the mundane things of today are completely irrelevant and instead people are having grand ethical, emotional and powerful dilemmas much greater than ours.

The last book I read of this sort was Atlas Shrugged.

It's possible that nothing can compare. It's also possible that I have been looking in the wrong places. My mother recommended the books "Exodus" and "The Ecstasy and the Agony" to me. Both were attempted and both were put down in boredom. Too dry, too much history, too wrong, too scary, too many complicated Italian names.

So thus has begun the search! The quest! The mission! to find the elusive novel that will keep me daydreaming of characters created from nothing but who will impact me as if real and could take me to their world for a few hours a day. Or perhaps a nonfiction read that could give me a completely mindblowing new perspective on the world.

Day 1(today) progress:
Count of Monte Cristo
Catch 22
Ender's Game
Why We Believe What We Believe
Outliers

Day 1(today) status:
unsatisfied

UofI Through the Eyes of Someone Flat

I do not know if many of you know this information about me, but as it stands, I am a big fan of little children. They are small, soft and very impressionable. They wear cute outfits, run around and scream a lot. I am not sure if they actually like me back. I tend to be very shy around children, which is odd because they are the least judgmental of all the human species. In fact, if I were to pick one up, throw it in the air, tickle it, roll it around and make odd noises at it, it would probably laugh and continue to be adorable. Perhaps that's only the response to a certain age. Regardless, they are cute and I would please like one so if anybody finds an extra child I would be happy to keep it in my room and feed it dried fruits.

I hope I don't sound cruel...

To digress slightly, the reason I bring up children is because my friend David's 7-year old cousin gave him an assignment to complete by April 15th. Basically what went down is the cousin sent David a cutout of herself and informed him that he needed to take this cutout around campus and take pictures of it and then record the adventures of the cutout girl.

I suppose David did not want to complete such an odd task alone, so he enlisted in my help. As is the case, I thought I would share the adventures of this little girl with those that read my blog! This is a tale of anguish, woe, hearthbreak and a little bit of romance... Enjoy!

My Trip to College

Since I am only in second grade, I have never been to a college before. At first I was confused because I thought I was going to be made into a collage. It’s a good thing that my cousin David explained the difference between the two.

As it turned out, I was mailed to the University of Illinois. It is about 3 hours South of Buffalo Grove. On the way down I passed many fields of corn and soybeans. They looked delicious! I think the college might be in the middle of one of those fields.

Here I am wearing my Illinois sweatshirt (I think that most kids on campus have the same one! I fit right in!):

In college you get to choose which subjects you study. There were so many things to choose from so I tried them all!!!

First I decided to try computer programming. Maybe I could design the next cool video game!

Here is my first attempt at a video game:

It was not very popular.

During my hours of programming I fell asleep 3 times. Programming was not as fun as I thought it would be so I decided to try something that would interest me more.

I like going on vacation with my family, so I decided to find out where all the countries are. I went to the library and found some maps. I found Iceland, Korea, and Norway. They did not seem like great vacation spots. Here I am on top of the world!!

It was cold up at the North Pole and Santa was sleeping, so I continued my adventure through the library to check out some books on a warmer topic. I found one called Thermodynamical Instabilities in Semi-Amorphous Crystalline Structures of Tungsten Nanowires. Here I am studying hard:

It was a very complicated book. I prefer reading the Harry Potter books. They are very exciting!

All that studying made me hungry! David did not have a lot of food options at his apartment. I took a picture of myself in his pantry:

The noodles were tasty, salty, and tasted exactly like chicken! I want to eat this every day when I’m in college. Yummy!

I was interested in what chemicals were in my chicken noodles. People called chemists study chemicals so I made my way over to the chemistry laboratories. The scientists were very busy trying to extinguish a fire, so I escaped quickly, but not before taking a picture next to their work area!

Here I am next to bottles called flasks and beakers. The chemicals are kept in here – I was told not to take a drink no matter how thirsty I was:

Working in the chemistry laboratory was hard because the safety goggles were too big :-(

Chemistry had too many equations, tricky tests, and strange-smelling substances so upon speaking with some sneaky squirrels, they slyly suggested I study something superior. Biology was the answer! Here I am at my first visit to the lab:

I got to play with some mice, some puppies and some bacteria. The bacteria were yucky so I washed my hands. 99.9% were eliminated. The remaining .1% were resistant to antibacterial soap and soon multiplied and took over my hands. Biology scared me. I wanted to calm myself down with some classical music.

This led me to the Music Building. The students there told me where I could find a piano. They were very helpful even if they were a bit eccentric. Here I am playing Mozart’s Divertimento No. 11 In D - Iv. Menuetto (Theme With Variations).

It was a pretty complicated song, but now that I’m college educated, it was no sweat for me! I learned it in 1 hr. Just kidding I am only visiting here! The music students played the song for me – how nice of them! By now it was very late in the day. The college students have a habit of getting together with friends on all nights of the week! I was astounded, but much too tired to join them in the festivities. I decided it was time for bed. Too bad the music was way too loud so I could not sleep. Instead, I read some of David’s fascinating books about engineering, and I quickly fell asleep.

The next day, I awakened to find myself in darkness. I guess during the night, David stuffed me into my envelope. To pass the time, I am journaling this letter.

As a whole, however, college was fun. I learned many things about the subjects you can study and about the crazy people who go there. I can’t wait until I am finally old enough to join in on the fun. For now, I will go back to Mrs. Labbe’s class and enjoy my life as a kid!

There it is! The fruit of mine and David's creations. I was going for a child's voice - trust me it was not hard to do. And who agrees that this basically describes college life as a whole, yes?

On another note, Happy Passover to all the Jews out there. Lets all shout hooray for escaping Egypt and slavery!

Have a good weekend......

Birthed.

Hello World!

I guess this is the start of something fresh, new and wonderful, right? I am excited.

And intimidated.

Is this the place where the whole world - strangers, friends, family, creatures - can read my innermost thoughts about arbitrary topics? Absolutely frightening.

But on the other hand, what is there to worry about? People do not come here to judge me! They come here to see what insight I can offer into their lives!! So much power for me!

So I guess I will start with describing what pushed me to putting this lovely little internet-child into growth and development. Last night, as I was talking on the phone with my boyfriend, I could not help but notice that he is wonderful at monologues. He has the skill of eloquently ranting about practically any topic! For hours, if prompted! I was impressed upon this realization, as any normal person would be, and decided that I need to work on my monologue/ranting skills because it must be a very necessary skill for the real world. Of course, I had been given the blogging idea before, but I have been feeling at a bit of a plateau in my creative development lately, so this seems to be the right time to start.

So here I am and here are my ruminations and here you are and here is the weekend and there is my physics exam and there goes April!