bang bangs

for years now i've wanted to get bangs. i mean, i've had side bangs for quite a while. but i'm talking about real bangs. bang bangs. ya know? well anyways, i've always found excuses not to get them, or chickened out at the last minute when the hair-cutter asked, "what do you want?" but today when the hair-cutter popped the question, i answered boldly, "bangs." and i'm so glad i did. not because i think they look great (i actually haven't decided whether i like them or not), but because i finally did it.

fortuneless cookie

tonight i had chinese food for dinner. and like any asian restaurant they served fortune cookies for dessert. so i picked a one, peeled the wrapper, and cracked the cookie open to discover what my future held. apparently my future holds, well...nothing. at least nothing fortunate. my cookie was empty and fortune-less. how sad.

the GIVE in give-a-day

have you heard about disney's "give a day, get a day"? this year, if you give a day of service, volunteering around your community, disneyland will give you a free ticket into one of their parks. i don't know about you, but i think that is the best deal i've ever heard of! not only do you get to lend a helping hand, but you get to spend a day at the happiest place on earth too? it doesn't get much better than that. the moment i heard about it i knew i had to do it. but going to disneyland by yourself is no fun, so i recruited some of my favorite friends and fellow second-southers claudia, jess, and tori to join in on the giving & getting and signed us all up. this weekend we put the give in give-a-day, and prepped, primed, and painted a house as part of san diego's "community serve day." we were just four of the fifteen-hundred people that volunteered around the county.

here's the house before
(i forgot to take an after)

we scraped...we caulked..and we painted...
and they gave us some super cute xxl tshirts for
all our hard work. ...best suvineers ever?
no, probably not.

we are now the proud owners of four tickets to disneyland. so be sure to stay tuned for the "GET in get-a-day" blog that will be posted in the somewhat near future. and if you're interested in participating in the "give a day, get a day" campaign (what am i saying? of course you're interested), just click here. even if you already have a pass, you can still take part. volunteer and donate your tickets to the boys and girls club, or get a day worth of fast passes or some mickey mouse ears. all the details are online. so what are you waiting for? go sign up!

pancakes and waffles, waffles and pancakes

here at nease second south (the dorm that i live in) we have the greatest RA ever. this morning she made us chocolate chip pancakes and mickey mouse waffles for breakfast. thanks, megalicious, for a yummy start to the day! you're the best!

jellies!

if you know me, or have ever seen my feet, there's a good chance that you have noticed the jellies that i wear on a regular basis. i got them two years ago at walmart for $5. as if the price wasn't enough reason to love them, they are also so comfy and, because they are clear, they match with anything and everything--hence why i wear them all the time. but because of all the wear, they've began to tear. for the past year, really, they've been falling apart. but i haven't been able to let go of them, and i haven't been able to find a new pair to replace them. until now, that is!

here are the oldies.
and here are the newsies!

you've got mail

there are few movies i love as much as you've got mail. and today, i watched it twice--likely for the 267th and 268th time. or something like that. it's my go-to movie for almost all occasions. if i need a pick-me-up, you've got mail. if it's a rainy day, you've got mail. if i'm sick, or bored, or even just looking for some background noise while i clean my room (as was the case today)...you guessed it, you've got mail. i could watch kathleen and joe fall in love on repeat for the rest of my life. and you know what? it would never get old. ever. there are so many things i love about this movie, and i'd be here all night if i wrote each one of them down. so i won't do that. but i will leave you with something said--or written, rather--in the film that i especially adore, that gets me every single time, that goes like this: "sometimes i wonder about my life. i lead a small life--well, valuable, but small--and sometimes i wonder, do i do it because i like it, or because i haven't been brave? so much of what i see reminds me of something i read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? i don't really want an answer. i just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. so goodnight, dear void." ...and goodnight to you too, reader.

shmo. shay-bay. shea butter.

whatever it is you happen to call her, it's her birthday today! shea has been one of my dearest, darlingest, bestest friends for years now. you see...it all started one day on the school bus in the fifth grade. and if you know the two of us, you know that our present day amity started off as more of a mutual enmity. maybe it's because she physically abused me by means of a binder to my face, or because i used my popular friends as weapons of mass derision towards her. but years later--whether it was because we were both just too darn lovable to resist one another, or because it was jr. high and we were desperate for friends--our hatred for one another was tossed aside and replaced with what would come to be a lifelong friendship (well, okay, so far it's only been an adolescent-long friendship, but it's well on its way to lifelong status). i will never, ever forget the stroll we took at summer camp nearly seven years ago. arms linked, we were walking out from chapel and onto free time when she looked at me, smiled, and simply said, "let's be best friends." with a laugh, i agreed and added, "we will no longer be known as just shea, or just alli. from here on out, we will be 'alli and shea.'" and while the whole "alli and shea" thing might not have stuck, our friendship has. i can't imagine my life--or this world, even--without shea in it. and in honor of this day that is devoted to her existence, we celebrated! the birthday girl's mom, dad, aunt, nan, boyfriend, and i took her out for some delicious italian food and fun.

so thanks, shea, for being born and for being my friend. i love your guts more than you'll ever know. oh, and happy birthday!

the day that did not love me back

i love valentine's day. i always have. even before i had a valentine to celebrate it with, i adored the holiday. my love for this day likely stems from my love of love. i am a helpless, hopeless, humongous romantic. so, it is no wonder that the fact that there is an entire day devoted to celebrating love and romance and warm, fuzzy feelings thrills me completely. ...i love valentine's day. but this year, it did not love me back.

i won't go into all the dismal details. but i will say that all of the plans that nathan and i had plotted fell through. and all of the surprises that we had in store for one another got spoiled. everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and by midnight last night it became quite clear that valentine's day was not going to happen for the two of us. at least not the way we had hoped. but rather than stress and sulk (although, i admit, there might have been a bit of both on my part), nathan and i decided to wipe the slate clean and treat this fourtheenth of februrary like any other day of the year. of course, we still spent the day together. he and i whiled away the day in the kitchen. we cooked and baked, sang and danced, and laughed and laughed. it was a perfect mixture of work and play, and somewhere along the way a meal was made.*


in the end, it turned out that this valentine's day was much less about the day--the plans and the surprises--and much more about the valentine. i suppose that's the way it should have been all along. and the way it should be from here on out. that's not to say that i don't still love valentine's day. i do. but hopefully next year it will love me back. and even if it doesn't, i'm pretty sure i have a valentine that will. ...i love you, nathan! thanks for today, and every day you spend with me.



*the meal we made included orange chicken, rice, and broccoli. and for desert we made milky way cake. the chicken was surprisingly yummy. if ever i make it again, though, i'll be sure to add less orange zest and corn starch. as for the cake, it actually tasted nothing like milky ways. a bit peculiar? i think so. also a bit of a let down. oh well!

fun with foliage

if you read about my trip to the tide pools last week, then you know that i field tripped again this week. another tuesday, another ecological adventure, and, as promised, another blog. this time we went to the bayside trail to observe plants in their natural habitat. sounds enthralling, doesn't it? i know that i titled this post, "fun with foliage," however, do not be fooled--it was the aliteration that i enjoyed, not the vegetation. in fact, "misery with greenery" would probably be a more fitting description of the day. the wind blew, the clouds rained, and i lost feeling in my fingers within the first five minutes. these conditions were not entirely conducive to the task at hand: spend 2 hours outside identifing, drawing, and labeling 10 plants throughout the 3-mile walk. for the sake of optimism, though, i'll stick with the original title and say that it was not all bad. looking on the bright side, i got a bit of exercise while hiking around the great outdoors, and i learned how to identify coastal sage scrub plants using a dichotomous key--a skill that i will surely use all the time. and by "all the time," i mean never.

professor mooring sported his fashionable field
trip attire once again. how can you not love that
hat, vest, zip offs combination? i know i do...

portlan asked me to take a picture of
this "cool erosion." ...here ya go, port
and this one pretty much sums up the trip...
me, being cold

we won't be taking anymore field trips for a couple of weeks. but hopefully next time the topic will be more rousing than plants, and the forecast won't involve freezing rain and arctic winds. ...i'll letcha know if those wishes comes true.

superhero bowling gyrad extravaganza!

every year my school puts on an event called, "superhero bowling." (i believe it's pretty self explanatory, but just for clarification: everyone takes turns rolling a ball down an alley in hopes of knocking down pins, while dressed as a superhero of their choice). every year, they've done this...until this year. however, just because it was no longer a school-wide event didn't mean it wouldn't happen. but how would it happen? ...have you ever heard of a gyrad? it's an acronym, really, that stands for, "get your room-mate a date," but i'm going to use it as a verb for a moment to tell you that we, at nease second south, gyraded and on saturday. we got our room mates a date and we took those dates bowling...superhero bowling. some of us were from comic books and video games, others from movies and t.v. shows, but all of us were superheros.

the heroines of the night

my room mate, claudia, got me the best date in the world.
nathan came all the way down to san diego to
be the mario to my luigi :)

julia and ben were my favorites of the night:
mermaid man and barnacle boy!
as judged by the girl working the register at fiji yogurt,
here are the winners of the costume contest: tmnt
and if you can tell me who jess and michael were
dressed as, i will be impressed. because i had absolutely

no idea who these people were prior to last night...

even though we didn't neccessarily bowl like superheros (myself inparticular), it was a super night, filled with super friends, topped off with some super fiji yogurt. and needless to say, i can't wait for the next time point loma cancels an event...

anemones, barnacles, and molluscs. oh my!

every tuesday afternoon i spend three hours in an ecology and conservation lab course. sounds fun, doesn't it? of course, i could understand why you'd be jealous. usually this lab consists of filling out tedious, tiresome lab reports about biomimcry and trophic levels. but this tuesday was neither tedious nor tiresome. it was actually a lot of fun. because instead of analyzing graphs of population trends or watching movies on global warming, we took a field trip! we spent the afternoon at the tide pools, hopping and slipping from rock to rock, hunting for all sorts of sea critters. we found all kinds of creatures--hermit crabs, starfish, regular fish, and even some strange sea mushrooms. of course, my camera died before we came upon the cool stuff. but i did managae to snap a few snippits of our safari.

you know you go to point loma when your
school is only a quick stroll from the beach

tide pools! ta-da!
lab partners, best friends, partners in crime...
a cave! neat-o!

it was a fun-filled field trip, full of...

anemones!barnacles!and molluscs!...oh my!

speaking of sea anemones, for some strange reason, our professor, dr. mooring encouraged us all to lick them. he did it himself, along with the majority of my class. as enticing as they all made it sound ("ouch!" "it burns!" etc.), i opted to keep my tongue to myself. here are two such participants, shea and portlan...making out...with one such anemone.

...other than that, the afternoon was quite normal. and also quite fun. nothing beats ditching class to scamper about with sea creatures. next week we're field tripping again. ...to go where? to do what? find out next tuesday!