barely breathing.

mustang daily and magazine club pretty much rule my life right now. forget sleep. forget fun. forget living.

i am living and breathing words. everyday.

one of my stories was published in the daily! so cool.

lord, please let me survive this quarter.

less is not more.

i'll be honest. 

i try to keep my blog lighthearted. there are plenty of other people out there blogging their brains out about religion, politics, their 

own lives, the world... a billion different things that usually are a. boring b. depressing c. kind of unsolvable.

today i'm writing a boring, depressing, kind of unsolvable blog about all of this budget cut nonsense. because i'm steamed. 

faculty and staff at cal poly and throughout the california higher education system are taking a ten percent pay cut and must abide by a new program that involves "furlough days." faculty and staff technically aren't getting a ten percent pay cut because the university requires them to take off six days per quarter. The idea is to allow them to work fewer days because their paychecks are less. Except they still have the same amount of work. 

Budget analysts, professors, lecturers, department heads and admi

nistration are all required to do pretty much the same amount of work they were required to do last year. 

this quarter alone i paid almost $400 more for tuition. that's an extra $1200 per year for tuition. 

this quarter one of my classes got canceled. due to budget cuts.

this quarter alone i'm also missing five days of class due to required "furlough days" my instructors must take.

so... i'm paying more and getting less.

there's got to be a better solution to this mess.

i'm not going to pretend to know what to do because i'm the first to admit that i need to educate myself further in what's going on with the budget. and i fully intend to do so. i just know that this system is not the right one nor is it beneficial to our educators or students.

education shouldn't be for those who can afford it. 

education shouldn't be compromised to make a statement about pay cuts.

education shouldn't be a number two, three or four priority to our government.

whatever's happening to our education system isn't right. there has to be a better system.

a pretty sweet picture of a protest at berkeley regarding the budget cuts. 

(check out my buddy kealan's blog to read about the protests going on at berkeley)

21!

katerina's 21st birthday party was a success! i think she had a really special day.

brett made her a romantic birthday dinner on the beach and then took her for dessert and a drink at nova.

ashley and i got kat some patron. delish.

the party starts...

party girl jess.

party girl ash.

excellent wednesday school night.

oh snap.

i'm listening to carrie underwood's "young and beautiful" and loving the lyrics, "while we're young and beautiful, we'll party down on mainstreet, wearing next to nothing, feeling every heartbeat." wow week, anyone? overall, a pretty good week. a couple of glitches, but a mostly fun week.

school's starts tomorrow. i have 7 a.m. class. 

thank goodness i love the morning.

summer was good to me. no complaints, no regrets. only a beautiful summer in slo with people who were good to me.

hello, junior year. please don't kick my butt.

this made me laugh so hard. love it. (thanks, anna, for the post!)

p.s. favorite pixar short film EVER.

lauren & david.

lauren came to visit this last weekend.

they're a fantastic couple.

the color purple.

instead of saving my money like a good girl, i've been spending it on beautiful things.

a couple projects of mine these past few days:

a purple painted mirror...

along with a purple/brown/green/yellow themed bathroom...

and a couple of adorable purple flower shower curtain hooks!

decorating is so addicting.

damn the man.

totally watched empire records today. it made me want to watch can't hardly wait. do you remember those days? when teen movies used to be edgy and amazing and you wished the love stories would happen to you but they wouldn't because you were like, eleven years old?

those were the days.

cross my heart.

third post of the night. i know. get a life, nikol, right? whatever.

there's a camera shop (photography 101) that's going out of business and having a sale on their camera stuff!

cross your fingers that i find some sweet nikon lenses for a close to nothing price.

thank you for the finger crossing.

what's up, boys.

p.p.s. i REALLY REALLY REALLY want to see this.

(tul)loch-ness monster

after having so much fun playing on the boat and jetskis last weekend, brett and i decided to do it once again with katerina and her family. we packed up the mercedes and headed north to lake tulloch to stay at aunt jeanie and uncle terry's cabin. 

their cabin was absolutely adorable. it was right on the water in a little cove on the lake. 

we did some tubing. uncle terry is a beast at driving the boat. my arms are still sore from holding onto the tube, trying not to fall off from terry's crazy driving. this is from when harry drove the boat and brett and kat tubed. i weenied out cuz my toe was hurting. except i just told everyone that i really wanted to take pictures. which was mostly true.

(bretterson getting some air)

we all had our turns at wakeboarding and were pretty darn successful! we all got up!

(third time's a charm. kat was the quickest to get up.)

(i love how kat's red toes match the board)

(bretterson chilling in the water)

when we weren't playing in the water, the puppies were! sprocket loved watching the fish near the dock. he must've stared at the water for at least an hour or two. bailey (kat's puppy) didn't like the water and didn't like people in the water either. he thought they were drowning.

we did a lot of this:

(brett finished his book, envy by sandra brown. one of my favs!)

lake tulloch was a cute little lake town. hopefully there'll be more trips in the future. 

p.s. thank you to eric who was patient and got me up on the wakeboard.

events leading up to a broken toe...

a couple photos from last weekend in parker:

gorgeous rocks. our view from our campsite.

lisa, gracie and layla (the puppy). about five seconds later layla was on top of the girls, doing the doggie water shake. gracie was not pleased.

pro lisa playing the 9-hole course in our campsite.

photo courtesy of lisa. this basically describes our weekend: blurry and silly.

my bestie, bretterson. please cover up those legs. we had a fabulous weekend together. i love how his family makes me feel like i'm part of them. 

thanks, henningers. you guys are the best. from sandy giving me don julio before the car ride to parker to mr. henninger always asking me on dates to lisa floating with me for hours and dancing on boats to lauren filling me in on the middle school- excuse me, now high school- gossip to bretterson agreeing to pull me on the shamoo behind the jetski.

what would i do without you guys?

yesterday i held a small meeting in the library for the magazine club. i really didn't expect people to show up. i didn't have a big game plan. i was pretty much not prepared (story of my entire summer).

a couple of lovely, dedicated people showed up and we got a heck of a lot done. i was stoked and now i'm ready to go back to school and start everything up again.

lately i've been questioning whether journalism is the right career path for me. i'm stuck with it for college, which isn't a problem, but i wasn't sure if it was what i wanted to do day in and day out for my job.

last night's meeting really helped me realize that journalism is for me, for now. i may change my mind (like i do about absolutely everything else) but for now, i want to write and talk to people and listen to their stories. i think doing absolutely nothing all summer killed my motivation to do anything productive in this world. 

i'm very much looking forward to school starting. i want a routine. i want journalism classes. i want magazine club. i want to DO SOMETHING.

p.s. our quartet last night was amazing. gideon, brett, kat and i sang many people to sleep. voices of angels, i'm telling you.