Life as a Superstar

Ian

Originally uploaded by ehop1088

Congratulations to my little brother, who just graduated from high school.

Su Lin enjoying her boo today

Originally uploaded by kjdrill

The Society for the Advancement of Pandas (SAP) has released a statement today regarding their recent protest at the White House.
Millions of SAP members and supporters gathered outside the White House gates Saturday to protest President Bush’s recent veto of a bill that would have given pandas residing in the United States the right to vote in the general election. “This is absolute madness” the SAP’s statement began, “these pandas have brought millions of dollars of revenue each quarter to this country. They are model citizens, so why should they be denied their basic rights?”
The Society’s mission is to “educate and empower the American panda community to further their education so that they may become better world citizens . . . . [and make] great contributions to the world.”
There has been no comment from the White House at this time.

I just thought I’d share with you a news broadcast about flame retardants featuring our own lovely Hannah Pingree.

I have a brilliant idea.

Let’s bring back the roller-disco!

Would you rather be rolling around to the latest 70’s hits or playing video games?  That’s what I thought.

So let’s do it!

I find it amusing that Active 4 Life has a dog sleeping in its window 24/7.

A few months ago my uncle sent me something about a new artist: Kate Nash. At first I didn’t really pay attention to her, but I just downloaded her album Made of Bricks and have fallen in love with the quirky music and videos. Below you can see the video for her single, Foundations. I guess I should warn you that there is language in it, so if that offends you, you should probably look for the edited version elsewhere.

Such bright colors! Silly clothing! Nice little shoes. I like.

I have been meaning to update my blog for a while. Unfortunately, post themes, titles and paragraphs come to me at the most inopportune times, particularly when I am cleaning the floor at the coffee shop. There is something about vacuuming that frees the mind. It’s kind of funny to say that, but I do think it’s true. It might be that constant drone or the rhythm of the movement, but my mind really starts to wander. That being said, I really hate doing it. Part of the problem is the abundance of distracting objects around. I can’t help but check out the books that I vacuum past. One of the perks about working in a book-filled environment is the constant availability of any genre of text. I am currently reading Stephen Hawking’s Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays and intend to finish the essays on Darwin that I started a couple days ago while on my lunch break. For some reason, science has captured my interest recently. Now that college classes are inevitable, I have started to think about what I would like to study. I certainly don’t intend to be a Cambridge-Oxford level physicist, but I wouldn’t mind taking a couple courses in science and mathematics. As ‘good’ as my education was in high school, I feel very let down in these two subjects. When I was visiting home recently, I went through some old papers I had saved from middle school. I was surprised to find worksheets outlining the same type of algebraic equations I was being asked to complete in my senior year. If I was competent in eighth grade, why should I have to re-learn these things over the four years following?

I remember being very excited by elementary particles in Middle School. I’m not sure how much we learned about them (I seem to remember it being a quick and simple course, though this was over 5 years ago) but it was still highly interesting at that time. I don’t know why we never did further research about the universe. Instead, our high school science classes seemed to focus on biodiesel and pathogens. I was never any good at understanding or explaining either of these things. So, I am looking forwards to taking a simple science class this fall and learning about how things work.

Steinheim Building at Alfred University, originally uploaded by bdesham.

A couple of weeks ago letters from colleges started coming in. I had applied to three schools and was accepted by one: Alfred University.

Alfred is in a town by the same name in New York State, out there with Rochester and Buffalo, and has 2,000 undergraduates attending. Despite getting into this private college, I was reluctant to accept them as my school, favoring the idea of moving to Scotland or England instead. Shortly after being accepted at the university I received word from their financial aid office. If I chose to attend their school I would be getting a fantastic financial aid deal. So I had to choose: free college or suffering alone for another year?

I haven’t yet officially accepted Alfred University as my school, but I am planning on attending this fall. It is the right thing to do, and hopefully it will open doors to other programs overseas.

Normandy, originally uploaded by ehop1088.

This is a test post from Flickr, a fancy photo-sharing site.

I have spent part of this afternoon editing and uploading photos that I took while in France in April, 2005. Flickr seems to have recently added a ‘Blog This!’ feature, and so I have decided to test it out.

I have much to update about including the results of my college applications and last month’s trip to Seattle.

Until then,

Eva

If I had a cat I would name him John Louis D’Ampton.