1/22/11

This is my little Hotei figurine I keep on my TV stand. Hotei is the God of Happiness in Buddhism. I've always been drawn to figurines of him and my mother gave me this before I left for college. The other day I dropped him and his hand broke, though (laying next to him). :( Emily did a sweet thing and fixed him with superglue, though, so he is good as new and inspiring me to be happy again (cheesy, I know).

1/23/11

This was a cool looking snowdrift I found at sunset. I like the perspective on this photo and how blue the evening sky is.

1/24/11

Emily got a new fish to replace the now deceased Grumpy. He had been sick for weeks so she just decided to humanely put him out of his misery. RIP Grumps. :( On the bright side, her new fish, State Farm a.k.a. Toothless (the former inspired by our friend Anna - long story - and the latter inspired from How to Train  Your Dragon) is super cute. He nibbles your finger if you stick it in the water and he's super feisty. We like him a lot. :)

1/25/11

These are my new inspirational quotes I put above my desk so I can stop being distracted while I study :) The top is "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall" from Confucius and the bottom is "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing" from Walt Disney.

1/26/11

I was walking through the oval about midday and it kind of hit me how many people really do go to OSU. There were so many students walking through the oval on all the different pathways and they often formed little single-file lines in different directions - like the pathway jutting off to the right of the picture.

1/27/11

Toothless/State Farm's tank again - this was his huge bubble nest he made! (And you can see him in the left of the photo) Emily cleaned the water and got rid of the nest a few days later and he already has made another one almost the same size. He's quite a happy fish.

1/28/11

Mmmm - Insomnia Cookies.  They deliver fresh and warm to your dorm on campus - at any hour. It's our favorite late night snack (these were Zack and I's leftovers when he came to visit this past weekend :).)

1/29/11

Zack and I went to have a belated anniversary (2 and a half years!) dinner at my former place of work, Sloopy's Diner. One of our favorite meals is brinner (breakfast for dinner), so that's exactly what we got. Yum.

1/30/11

One of my favorite fruits. A good late night study snack. And I also thought a close up looked pretty cool.

1/31/11

This is Emily and I's new dorm decoration - matching roomie key and wallet hooks. We even wrote our names on them and decorated them. Mine is on the right. Aren't we just precious? :)

2/1/11

We had a huge ice storm the previous night. We were all sure classes would be cancelled, but of course, OSU is too tough to let that happen - they just dumped loads of salt on the sidewalks and had us carry on. Oh well, I got some really great ice pictures out of it! Above is ice-encrusted grass.

A view of the trees outside of my dorm - they all looked silvery because of the ice coating. The picture doesn't do it justice though!

A little red bush covered in ice.

2/2/11

I didn't mean for the camera to flash and make his eyes all red but I couldn't resist - his mouth is open as he eats his little fruit! Isn't he adorable?

2/3/11

A sheet of ice glistening in the afternoon sunshine.

Pretty twilight on the icey pathways.

Time to get all caught up on the past three weeks' photos! I've been pretty busy settling into the new quarter at college.

1/1/2011

Happy New Year!

Silly picture I took of my kitties. That's Fred in the background and I believe the lump under the comforter is our obese kitty, Isabel. She likes to burrow.

In the upper left hand corner you can see a blurry white blob...ghost of a previously owned cat resting on the bed with the others, perhaps? My mom thought I was crazy for thinking so :) But hey, who knows?

It's always a sad day when you take down the Christmas tree. :( Here lies our beautiful spruce tree that served us well for weeks.

1/2/2011

Holy kitty? He seems to be looking off into the light...(this is Ginger)

Oh, Isabel. She loves her bags. I tried to lift her up while she was in this but poor thing is so heavy that the bag ripped. (Go ahead, laugh - I did, haha.)

I always get the most gorgeous sky shots when we are driving back down to Columbus! This was on the ride back down on the last day of winter break. I guess it's because we are heading west(ish) some of the way and always seem to make the trek around 4-6 pm!

1/3/2011

My cute little bamboo plant (and various other desk decorations) that my wonderful roommate Emily got me for Christmas! She got it while in Chile over break. (Yes, she went to Chile!) Her boyfriend, Tomas, is Chilean and has family there that he was visiting and as part of her family's Christmas present, they sent her along! She was ecstatic. The little pot that the bamboo is in was apparently handmade. :)

1/4/2011

I thought the clouds looked really cool that day because the were white and fluffy but also had big threatening gray snow clouds scattered in. The winter sky is always so clear.

1/5/2011

This is the ceiling in one of the coolest buildings on campus...Sullivant Hall. It is home to the dance program and where I take my dance history class. I never knew how gorgeous the building was until this quarter! Hidden gem for sure. This ceiling was in a big open room right off of the auditorium, where my class is.

1/6/2011

Ahhh snow! It's pretty funny to me because when it snows in Columbus, people tend to freak out even if it's the slightest bit...same thing with colder single-digit temps. Us Akron folk never seem to care much because to us, 3 inches of snow and a windchill of -3 is pretty normal January weather! 

I took this picture on campus on 17th Avenue to show the big beautiful snowflakes falling that day - visible if you click the picture to make it larger. Snow is beautiful when it falls that way!

1/7/2011

I must have skipped a day...again. :-/ Oops.

1/8/2011

My Akron souvenirs to remind me of home. :) Thanks for the Goodyear blimp eraser, Dad! The little blue penguin-shaped sillyband is from Emily. She gave it to me toward the beginning of the school year when she found out about my obsession with penguins.

1/9/2011

One of my favorite perfumes ever. (My other one is Ralph by Ralph Lauren, pictured behind this one) Zack got this for me for Christmas this year - love Coach, love perfume, love cutesy decorative bottles. This was overall a win. :) (Good job, Zack.) It smells amazing!

1/10/11

Emily found this on one of those annoying like-websites for Facebook and it made us laugh. Read from "Girl Language" down until you get to, "when you see me crying, wipe my tears with your handkerchip." We thought that was hilarious! First of all, no one uses handkerchiefs...especially not "handkerchips." Ha.

1/11/11

It snowed a LOT this day...there is a holly tree right outside of my dorm and it just looked so pretty. I love the perfectly round red berries contrasted against the snow.

1/12/2011

One of my favorite things to get to eat at OSU by far. It's a new salad they got in this quarter, called a Moroccan tofu salad. The tofu is marinated in some sort of sauce that makes is Moroccan and really tasty - garlic, chiles, not sure what else. The dressing was also phenomenal - orange almond. Yum.

1/13/2011

I liked how this sweet gum ball was covered in ice. Winter does some cool things to nature, I must say.

1/14/2011

Typical Stanley picture! I had a picture of him up on the blog before - he's Zack's shy little dog. He usually has wiry gray hair but they took him to get groomed and had all his fur shaved off! He looks very handsome now, we all think. (I went home for the long weekend, which explains why I have a picture of Zack's dog!) He looks so terrified...then again, that's kind of just how he always looks.

1/15/2011

Prepare yourself for...toddler pictures!

This is Zack's ADORABLE 2-year-old cousin Alanna. We babysat her Saturday night for a few hours. She behaved for us and even let me snap about a billion pictures of her - what a good girl. Here she is pictured trying to play her "lele" - her word for "ukulele."

Smiling for the camera!

She's so cute. And her and Zack absolutely adore each other, as you can tell, which makes the whole thing even cuter. (When she sees him, she points and shouts, "Dack!")

1/16/2011

I loved how the icicles hanging from my house looked illuminated by the morning sun.

Silly Ginger - he loves stretching out in the sunshine.

1/17/2011

For some reason, I skipped this day too. I think I just forgot.

1/18/2011

This is at a place to eat on campus called Marketplace. Somehow I snagged one of the couches near the fire Tuesday night when eating there with my friends Ian and Anna. Couches are a rarity in college (and treasured because of it!) and it is especially difficult to actually SIT on a couch in a lounge or sitting area if you find one. I felt rather lucky that night...lucky enough to document my ultimate relaxation experience with my camera.

1/19/2011

I got a new tank for Ocean (a bigger, 2-gallon one with an air pump) so that he would be happier and not so confined and so far he LOVES it. I also got him a fun plant and rock that he loves to hide in. He's so fun to pamper and buy stuff for.

1/20/2011

Columbus had the most snow by far this season yet (about 3.5 inches by the end of the day - wow. *sarcasm*). I took this picture before it even got too bad out from my window - it looks kind of cloudyish because of all the snow. Although there wasn't a huge amount of accumulation compared to what is normal in Akron, it was still crazy to see it all falling so fast the entire day!

1/21/2011

I took this picture this morning of the snowy aftermath and the lovely construction below our window...and the flocks of birds nesting in the trees below us! Can you see them all? I thought it was funny that there was so many!