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shinglehopper
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Name: Jimmy
Location: Minnesota, United States
Birthday: 1/19/1989
Gender: Male
Interests: Writing, reading, piano, knitting, country music, speech, friends, family, boys, sleeping, thinking, German, pottery, the sky, the world, and the bound or completely infinite universe.
Expertise: Happiness and the like.
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  jimyA022
Member Since:
4/17/2004
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| Sneaking back here and writing a xanga entry eight months later, I feel a little bad. But here is what I will say:
This year I had two resolutions starting January 1: The first was that I would journal every day - whether that be on xanga, in a journal, or in some other form. The other was Picture of the Day, which you can see the beginnings of in the below entry.
It's now August 27.. well it is now August 28, but just barely, and so far I have kept both of these resolutions, which is probably the first time I have accomplished such a thing! Not all of my journal entries are very long or interesting, and not all of my pictures are good, but some of them are! And I'm doing what I really set out to do, which was to document my year. So I feel pretty good about that!
Here are a few highlights that occurred between January 10, and August 28:
I finished my first year of college! I really had a great time. Fall term I was not feeling that great, but winter and spring terms proved to be really spectacular. I had very interesting classes, including Chinese religions and Jewish German history. Chinese religions ended up being a bit of a bust, but Jewish German history was so interesting. It felt really neat to go so in-depth about a topic like this.
Also this year, I performed as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady is among my very favorite movies, and so of course I had to try out, and somehow I got the part. This was just really exciting to me, and I'm really glad I did it. The show happened around 3rd week of spring term, and there were three shows.
Picture of the Day: April 8
The Ascot Gavotte. This is during one of our dress rehearsals - but there's still a couple gentlemen and ladies wearing jeans!!
This summer I went to Germany to visit friends. First I was in Dusseldorf for three weeks with my friend Stefan. Stefan was pretty lazy, so I ended up doing a lot of exploring of the city myself. After this, my friend Liz, who was an exchange student for a year at Wayzata, came and picked me up, bringing me back to her village called Stressenhausen just over the former east-west border. Stressenhausen is 360 people, and the people there definitely have a bit of a dialect, so understanding them was pretty difficult to me. Germany was great and I learned a lot, but I also felt pretty lonely a lot of the time while I was there. I guess I really just wished I had had a friend with me.
Picture of the Day: July 16
My friend Liz on the spiral staircase in Schloss Callenberg in the city of Coburg, which is in Bavaria!
But now I'm back home. Since being home, I've been doing a lot of knitting - I did a new sweater, a hanging storage unit for my dorm, and a lampshade.
Picture of the Day: August 11
I used really thick yarn for this sweater, so it got done really fast. It's modeled off a sweater I saw them selling at Abercrombie last year for $378. The yarn still cost quite a bit though - around $100. But I think it was definitely worth it!
But my mom, while biking with my dad, crashed and broke her ankle! Poor Momo! She is now in a cast, and so I have been on Momo duty for the past few weeks. I'm doing most of the housework, because my dad and sister are both at work every day. I've been doing a lot of cooking and cleaning, and I guess I am learning quite a bit about the details of housework. It makes me hope that someday I will have the chance to be a stay-at-home dad for a little while.
Momo in the hospital on August 10! Now she's got a proper green cast, that Laura and I signed for her. She actually just went back to work on Tuesday, and she's healing just great, they're saying!
Umm.. not too much else is up.
I'm heading back to Carleton this Saturday. Classes don't start until the 15th, but I'm going to be an RA this year, and so I've got a lot of training before the other students arrive. I'm really excited to get back - my friend Kate is going to be there for soccer pre-season, so I'll get to see her, and I guess I'm just excited to be back and doing something again, and when classes start, hopefully they'll be interesting. I'm going to have American lit, Chinese, intro to educational studies, folk dance, maybe pipa lessons, and an astronomy independant study - CCD photometry, so I'm going to make HR diagrams of a star cluster! Sweet.
I know it's very possible that it will be another 8 months before I write again. I really hope it won't be. But we'll see. Until sometime, then!
love, Jimmy
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| Yes, so I am here, and things are going pretty well. I've attended my new classes and gotten some homework... hmm....
Chinese class, I am unsure of. I don't think I like it very much as of yet. I feel kind of unprepared, but at the same time it's not so much that as it is the feeling of not being able to understand what someone says to me, which is just not a very comforting feeling. It has been a while since I was in an intro language class, and it's just a bit unsettling to me. I have three different teachers. One professor on Monday Wednesday, another on Friday, and a TA on Tuesday and Thursday. I dunno. I hope I will get to like it.
Chinese religions class is I think going to be a good class. My professor just graduated from Princeton, and so she's fairly young, and she seems as though she understands the class better than my older professors last term did. She joked with us. Her name is Asuka Sango, but she says to call her Asuka, but Asuka is really pronounced "Aska." I find this an interesting name. Anyway, I've been doing some of my readings for this class, and I'm discussion leader next week. I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot. I'm looking forward to it.
Astronomy will also be good I think. This class takes place in this huge lecture hall.. I think it's the biggest classroom at Carleton, and at first the room kind of scared me, because it was dark, and large, and ominous. But as the class progressed I began to feel that it was a very interesting space. There were light spaces and dark spaces, and I felt as if it really were a classroom of the universe, which I suppose it is. My professor for this class is also pretty cool I think. I've begun my readings for Astronomy too and I like the textbook pretty well.
Piano I don't feel so excited about. I had my first lesson this evening, and I don't think I liked my teacher very much. He was not very friendly.
Pictures of the Day is going pretty well.. they're not always gorgeous pictures, but they are at least reflective of the days I've had.
Laura came up to visit today after her trip in Mexico. She had a really good time, which makes me glad. She told me about her trip, and we went to dinner at the new waffle place in Northfield, which is super good! I guess its philosophy is that a waffle is simply a base, and the only reason we think of waffles as sweet is because we put syrup on them. But Laura's and my waffle was a "Minnesota Burrito" with cheese, tomato, green onion, and sour cream.! How strange! But it was really really good! Wow! I will definitely be going back.
I received two rather exciting Christmas gifts here at school. The first is a massage pad thing. It makes me very sleepy. The other is a tea kettle to use on the stove, and some new tea. I've had two very enjoyable pots of tea with it so far.
Other than that, I'm making my way through first weekend. I'm in Ebody II this term, which is a big dance show that a huge group participates in, and you don't need experience, which is fun. So I am in a dance to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." It's lots of fun haha we do some very goofy moves in it. We're performing in yikes two weeks! That's really coming up soon. But the nice thing is, it will then be over, and I'll have time to focus on classes as they get more intense. So I can do both.
I'll try and write more soon. I've been writing pretty consistently in my journal, so even though I haven't been on xanga the past couple of days I have not broken my New Year's Resolution yet. Not that it seriously matters..
Hope all is well, and yes. Goodnight. love, Jimmy
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| Tomorrow I'll go back to school, and this evening I've been packing.
It's been a really wonderful day, today. I saw Sarah, Natalie, and Tyler. I became inspired, which is maybe not a good thing, because now back at school I won't have hardly any time to knit or to write, but whatever. I became inspired. I had a really wonderful day. Talking with Tyler was very warming.
So now I am packing and knitting my final Christmas gift, which I will give tomorrow. I have a feeling that I'm going to be up a while tonight, hopefully getting stuff done, but maybe not. I'm not sure how, but it really feels as though I'm taking back about twice as much stuff as I brought home. Hopefully I am not bringing back too much frivolousness.
I hope I'm ready to go back. This break is ending really well. I feel full of hope, love, inspiration, forgiveness, some excitement, faith, warmth, and too many clothes!.
Happy New Year. I believe it will be a beautiful one. Too bad this post sounds pretty cheesy! Speaking of which my mom just made cheese crackers in the oven. I didn't know people did that, particularly my mother.
Soon I will begin posting my photos of the day, but seeing as I only have one so far, I am not posting any yet.
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| First and foremost come hat pictures! Here are two that I think show a good representation of the earflap hat. What do you think?
 
In the end, the hat used less yarn than I thought it would, which means I have extra to knit something else with! It has two color-stranded/intarsia trees on it, and then the four deer and the lamppost are color-stranded, and the orange is embroidered afterward. All in all, I'm really pleased. It isn't perfect, but it's been keeping me really warm lately. : )
I've had two pretty busy days of late, and I will write about them now!
Yesterday the 28th was my dad's birthday, but he had to work, so nothing very exciting happened until he came home. But Mom and I hung out, and I cleaned my room, and while cleaning, I found something very important. Back in 9th grade, Jenna and I had said that we would write each other letters but not read them until September 1st 2007, that is, around the start of college. Well, in August 2007 I lost Jenna's letter, and sifting through these papers, I found it! Wow! it was so exciting to read. I am going to give her a call tomorrow I think. I felt really bad losing the letter, and I'm really glad I found it.
For lunch, Momo requested that I make my grilled sandwiches, because I guess they are pretty good. I tried mine on rye bread this time, and I also put vinegar on my sandwich. It was really good! I was really pleased with how it turned out, though the tomato was a little bit mushy because it was old. I enjoy grilling sandwiches.
For Dad's birthday, the plan was to go to the Guthrie to see "A Christmas Carol," and I invited Tyler
 to come with. Tyler's family recently moved to a condo, so I went to pick him up (since he didn't have a car) to see said condo. It was a really nice place, and I got to have a good talk with Tyler's brother and sister. I hadn't met his brother Nathan before, but I had met his sister Leann once. Then Tyler and I came back home, and then all four of us drove down to the Guthrie.
We had dinner on the 5th Floor Cafe, which was really quite good. The Guthrie is really beautiful! Wow! The architecture was very well thought-out and interesting, and there was an observation deck over the Mississippi where you could see the skyline. At dinner, there was a centerpiece with a candle surrounded by cranberries. They were very old cranberries. My dad ate one! And then Momo and I ate one too! They were not bad. Tyler would not eat one though, because they were old I think, or maybe he just doesn't like cranberries. Come to think of it, I don't particularly like cranberries. But oh well. Afterward, Mom asked the waitress if we were meant to eat the cranberries, and she said she had seen us picking at them, and that other people ate them, but that they are very old. She was a fun waitress.
Then we saw the show! I was really impressed, not having been to the Guthrie before. They really had some fun with it, putting some humor in, and at the same time it was frightening! There was this one moment of hugely loud thunder and it was like, omg. But it was a good show. There were definitely some parts that hadn't made it into the movie versions of "A Christmas Carol." But I do have to say, I wish Scrooge had made a bigger turn-around in the play version. I mean, yes, he became generous and kind and Christmasy, but it seemed reluctant. Perhaps this was more realistic, but I do wish it had been more crazy-different, if that makes sense.
On the way home, we saw a newspaper thing in the middle of the street! How strange.
We dropped Tyler off and then went home for cake and presents. I think it was a good birthday for Dad.
Today I worked at the library from 8:30 to 12:30. It was my last day there until I come home for spring break. I will miss the library.
Then, Dad and I went cross-country skiing! When I was little we would go often, but lately we've barely gone, plus the winters have been lousy. This winter, though, is phenomenal, and so we got out and skied. It snowed lightly throughout, but there was no wind. It was gorgeous out. We did one trail, but on our way back to the trailhead we got lost and ended up doing a whole nother trail. This was a bit much skiing. I was so poooped when we finally got back! But it certainly was good exercise. I'm hoping to go again sometime before the end of the winter. I only fell down once.
We had planned to then get Momo and go to Northern Clay Center and the Bakkan Museum, but since we got lost at Baker Park skiing there was only time to go to Northern Clay. We looked around the gallery and showed Dad the studios in back where we took our class last summer. I hadn't been there in a long time. I became re-inspired.
I'm going to go to Perkin's with Andrew tonight, and then Tomorrow I'm going to volunteer at a kids program at Ridgedale Library and then bake cookies with my friend Rebecca and have dinner with Matt. I'm looking forward to all this. Now that Christmas is over more people's schedules are freed up.
Hope all is well with you all, and 2007 is nearly through!
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