what is not going on the cover of the vox "water issue" this week:
A very phallic-looking water droplet.

heartless? maybe. funny? hell yeah
Last night, in the only free hour of my day, I had to run all over town trying to get stuff done before my Missourian shift. You might say I was a bit stressed. It was great comic relief, then, when I saw not one, but two separate instances of grown men fall off their bikes. Each time, the guy was just riding along and then all of a sudden, the bike seemed to crumple beneath him and -BAM!- he was biting pavement. Maybe I have some kind of bike-possessing super powers. Or maybe, it's karmic justice for the four bikers that nearly ran me over in one day last week. I swear that Thursday I had a target on me somewhere because the bicyclists kept popping out of nowhere, heading for a straight-on collision with yours truly.

the week (and a half) of reunions
Last week it seemed like I kept running into people (not literally, I save that for the cyclists) I haven't seen in forever:
*Beth, from Manhattan, at church
*Craig, also from Manhattan and a fellow Wika School of Journalism grad, outside the J-school
*Mark, on the quad
*Ben, who stopped by the house and I was actually here for once
*Jill, for a movie date (Under the Tuscan Sun, fabulous girly movie)
*Andy, outside the education library
And talked with people I haven't spoken with in a while:
*May-gun, summer roommate-turned permanent out of towner
*Elizabeth, my Nice trip buddy from London
*Liam, from Manhattan
And tomorrow (today by this clock) is another London reunion with the program directors who are in town, interviewing next semester's interns. (My roommate and Pat being among that group.)
However, in spite of all the fun people I've seen in the past week...

i think i'm being ignored
Here's my public plea to try to get Tuttle to return my phone calls. Where are you?

speaking of tuttle
It's time for Blogger to add to its collection of blog templates. Too many of my friends have the same ones! I check blogs before I go to bed, often half asleep. I have to remind myself whether I'm reading Tuttle's blog or Tim's, Kate's or Scott's, J-Dub's or Natalie's. I'm tired of trying to figure out why Holly is talking about Seattle baseball, Katie's discussing her Sweedish roommate and treks through Hollywood, and Courtney's conversing with Tom via blog. Get a bit creative, Blogger and help out your patrons.

the commercial
Let me know if you can get it to show on your computer. We seem to be having bad luck with it at the office. Quality MU technology at work.

MU v. KSU
Mizzou takes on K-State the first Saturday of Thanksgiving break in Manhattan. Anybody interested in attending with me? You'd have a place to crash (we have plenty of floor space) and there'd of course be a tailgate. Tickets are $40, but I'm going to see what we can do about a group rate. Right now, though, I need to know who might be interested. Any takers?

sometimes i'm a bit behind the times
Last Friday was the University's big fundraising kickoff and I forgot to post a link here so you all can see one of my summer projects. I selected the still photographs for the "For All We Call Mizzou" "music video." I'm expecting Carson Daly's phone call asking me to personally introduce the video on TRL any day now.

When they finally supply it, I'll include a link for the commercial I helped out with this summer. If you're in the KC or St. Louis area, keep your eyes peeled for an MU commercial about "Billy" and his family with Brad Smith in it. Those props you see...all under my control...

made for struttin'
I feel exhilaratingly confident when I wear my knee-high London boots.

advertise this
Have you ever paid attention to the ads at the top of Blogger pages? I wonder how Blogger matches them up. There has to be some kind of system. After my olfactory post, I have ads about removing "that rotten egg smell" and citrus oils that eliminate odors "naturally." Other blog ads of note:

Natalie's (who is getting married in January): all about honeymoons
Dan's (with a near-enough confirmation of the Pat Healy-Jayson Blair rumor - see eversoE post from 9/15): all about the New Yorker
Meh-gen's: "Know God" and a "Haunting song" about heaven
Holly's (who hasn't written much since her Twilight Festival post): Columbia Missouri Hotels
Courtney's (who trains horses out in LA): Horesback Riding Vacation
Tim's (who has just added a photolog to his links): all about photo sharing and prints
Erin's (who recently blogged about National Talk Like a Pirate Day, which was last Friday for those of you who missed it): "Get the latest translators for 100s of languages!"

The most amusing:
What are all the hangover ads supposed to say about Fiscus?

If you were design your own banner ad, what would it say?

i think i'm the fourth to post about this conversation
Erin asked me the other night why I still post to this blog. I guess in a way, I'm a bit of an egomaniac. I want to think that people are interested in what I do and say and at least with my blog I can think that the world is reading my musings. Then I met the world, or at least a piece of the world, and my postings for at least the next semester or so are confirmed. Saturday night, out with Fiscus et. al, I met Maureen, who promptly confessed to both me and Sarah that she is an avid reader of our blogs. Repeat: I met Maureen - meaning that her readership existed before any personal contact between the two of us. So apparently people in the world are reading this site.

In the effort to keep from sounding too egomaniacal, if you take a look to the right, you'll see a list of my "friends," half of whom are in places other than here. Reciprocal Blogging has been a good way to keep in touch...even to make friends.

additionally...
Today I'm wearing perfume from a sample I got in London (Ralph Lauren's Romance) and it's almost like I got ready next to the bay window in Flat 1, the BBC giving me my morning news as I sipped my cup of Twinnings tea and ate a crumpet. I'm almost out of samples but can't justify the $40 for a new bottle of Romance. sigh...

furthermore
I met with Jill McWretched this week and found out that I only need 10 credits next semester to graduate in May: two journalism classes and two gen eds...which I can take pass/fail. ! The end is reachable.

now that my olfactory senses have returned to normal...
I think I'm getting over my cold and now I'm noticing smells again. Have you ever thought about powerful a smell can be? I don't mean in the Ace Ventura "Whew! Do NOT go in there" kind of power. I mean powerful in the way a scent can take you back to things/people/places in your memory. The hallway connecting the Artisan to the building's bathrooms smells exactly like my dance studio growing up. Every time I go out there, I forget that I'm not wearing a leotard, tights and pointe shoes and have to keep myself from doing combinations across the tiled floor.

Instance no. 2.
I passed a girl in the halls of Lee Hills caught a whiff of the perfume that Gracy wore our freshman year when we were roommates. Wow. All of a sudden, images of 311 McDavid hall rushed back. The Christmas lights we had up all year in a desperate attempt to avoid using the horrid overhead fluorescent light; my pathetic black and white pictures from high school photo projects overshadowed by her fabulous photography; the two of us going out on photo shoots of our own around campus; trying soy peanut butter on raisin bread...and liking it; talking about mix tapes and what it means if a boy makes you one.

The final evidence that scent is powerful.
The summer after freshman year, I met (and crushed on) a guy who always wore a certain cologne. A semester and a half later, I sat next to a random guy in my child psychology class who happened to be wearing that cologne. It was the biggest struggle to pay attention to the lecture because I wanted to do nothing but take deep breaths of the guy sitting next to me. Talk about distracting.

Any smelly stories you'd like to share?

*sniff sniff* *cough cough*
Have you ever held your hand against a balloon as it's being blown up and felt the pressure of the plastic expanding? That's how my sinuses feel. Just thought I'd share.

mmmm...digestives...
Mary Pat's British beau got into town this weekend for his three-week visit. He brought with him four packs of McV's chocolate caramel digestives and MP brought one pack with her to class today. She'd better be careful; Sarah and I are going to begin to expect no less than two cookies a class for the next few weeks.

can anyone confirm this?
Rumor has it that J-School boy wonder P@tr!ck HeAly has taken Jayson Blair's desk at the New York Times. Can anyone corroborate this story?

a bit more
For Luke's enjoyment, if he ever reads this anymore, and for Sarah: I think the alternate name for the SNDC conference last weekend was "Mac enthusiasts unite." Beautiful iBooks were simply everywhere.

beyond what they teach in the classroom
I learned that I have a lot to do still before I'm ready to start seriously looking for a job.
On the list:
-make business cards
-create a website of my portfolio and resume
-put together print-outs of a handful of my best work
-get some color into my portfolio
One thing that I found everso interesting was the variety of responses I recevied about various layouts in my portfolio. There were about two or three pages/spreads that received the most comments. After one reviewer would praise my choices in design, the next would tear it apart. It fascinates me how subjective design can be. Overall, I think the most important lesson from the weekend was learning how to be more confident when talking about my work and what I want to do with design.

a quick rundown of the sights
I spent most of the weekend in the Omni Shoreham being inspired and learning how to schmooze, but at night we hit the main sights of DC. You know them: White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Korean Memorial, the Mall (which is huge, by the way), the Smithsonian (just the buildings, no time to go inside) and the Capitol. Sunday morning before we had to leave for the airport, I ran to the National Gallery. My intention had been to get to the Phillips Collection, which houses Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, my all-time favorite piece of art. As my luck would have it, the painting is somewhere between Buffalo, NY and Denver on a traveling exhibition. Instead I saw a lot of VanGoghs, Degas, Monets and a few other Renoirs so at least I got my fix of Impressionist art. Next time I go, though, I want to have enough time to go see some of the more modern art like Matisse and O'Keefe.

a sighting of another sort
The Rev. Al Sharpton was on our plane from DC to St. Louis. GQ had a page in this month's issue about his style and running for the Presidency....which I just happened to have on me. So before boarding, I so graciously asked him to autograph his page. And he so ingraciously (ungraciously?) scrawled his name without so much as a "Have a nice flight." Nice campaigning, buddy. No vote for you.

to forewarn my parents
This will probably be my worst semester grade-wise. I am so overwhelmed with reading for classes I couldn't care less about and these readings compete with the time I'd rather be spending doing stuff that matters (i.e. building my portfolio with Vox clips). My posts will probably be sporadic or else very brief from now on. (No Garvin-length posts for me.) I'm sure you can deal with that.

a late update
DC was great. Fabulous. Wonderful. Inspiration that was much needed. Sometimes I used to wonder if Mizzou was the right place for design and last weekend was confirmation that while the MU J-School might not stress design, the connections within the journalism world are beyond what I could get elsewhere. I don't think I've ever been with so many people that love design so much. Total encouragement, baby.

was i only dreaming?
I have the pictures on my walls. Pictures of Big Ben, a cafe in Paris, the piazza outside the Vatican. I share conversations with Protz, Sarah, Emily, Mary Pat, Ellen, Russ, Seth. I get calls from Michael and emails from Careth and Elizabeth. I wear my Dublin pants and Nice shirt while carrying my British purse. I share the memories of last semester with my friends and flatmates who experienced London and abroad along my side. But the day-to-day of Columbia living and the familiarity of school has made those memories seem like fiction. I cling to the daily conversations with flatmate Sarah, laughing over the un-packably huge Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock movie poster that we left for our summer Flat 1 successors to enjoy, and dancing to the Madonna and Britpop that plays in our head. Ah, the Flat 1 dance parties...

Seriously, though, it almost feels as though last semester has faded from existence. I know that I talk about London too much. I appologise. Sometimes I'm afraid that I might appear as though I'm flaunting my experience in the faces of others. But I don't mean to flaunt or boast. If I can't shut up about London, it's because I'm afraid that if I do, the term will turn out to be a dream after all.

ready to check this one off the list
I came to college with a list of cities I wanted to visit before graduating. In January, I spent a couple days with Erin in Chicago and crossed that city off my list. This summer, my hopes of visiting New York with my family were thwarted...by none other than my family (see June 12 post with the head "meanwhile...in mid-missouri"). But I'll get there, mark my words. After all, after this weekend, NY will be the last of the big three.

I'm headed to DC, guys! The annual Society for News Design workshop and exhibition will be there...and so will I. I'm really excited because this will be my first "professional" thing to do as a designer, albeit it's a group of newspaper designers rather than magazine. But hey, experience is experience and connections are connections. Ron Johnson from K-State (and our former neighbor on Newbury St. in Manhattan) is giving the opening talk for the student members of SND. And then there's Sara Jackson (also from K-State) and Tim. And I'll be in DC. After visiting the capitals of five different countries last winter, I'll finally be able to say I've seen my own.

There I go again, relating everything to London...I swore I'd never be one of those study abroad students. Oh well. Live with it.