"Sometimes it's just like I really wanna hang onto everyone and everything from my past and have it all and control it all and be perfect. But then somehow something hits me and I realize how much is PAST, gone, and all that's left is the beautiful memory, not the emotion, not the feeling of wanting anything back, just that it's all there in my head. And that's what satisfies me and that's why I'm happy and I know my decisions were right and that's how I got here."

I read that on a friend's AIM profile and I thought it succinctly stated something I've also thought many times since high school. Just thought it deserved to be posted.

In other news, I think I'm in love. And not with the usual Suspects. No siree, this time I've got it bad. I'm swooning, infatuated, insatiable, completely consumed. I can think of nothing else; I woke up dreaming of this love interest of mine (we were making out, if you must know); I got tingly in my tummy everytime I thought of him today. Sigh...I'm in love with Gavin DeGraw.

Sure, my old buddies ol' pals are thinking, I've heard this one before -- AJ Popoff (lead singer of the band Lit), Craig (ok you guys know that wasn't a love crush, that was a physical wow-you're-hot crush), Jason E...but this time it's different, for rizzle.

Gavin DeGraw is incredible. (Even thinking of him now, his cute grin, his floppy hair, his amazing biceps...I'm getting lost here...but besides his physical beauty, he's also eloquent and bright, a major turn-on) Yesterday Biffy and I went to one of the top three concerts I've ever attended (in that top three are also Our Lady Peace and Jason Mraz, just to give you and idea of the caliber of this quality), featuring Marc Broussard, Gavin, and Maroon5. One of the best parts was that we got to cover it for the Technique and so we got to go early to interview all three of them! Intense. And since we were there so early, we were in the very front row (as in, against the bars that separate the crowd from the stage). The whole afternoon and evening was like a near-religious experience. I still am feeling overwhelmed. I feel anxious, like this mad rush of feelings aren't going to go away until I do something (make out with Gavin...?), but what can I do? Nothing, really. I mean, G.D. is 26, traveling around the country doing his music thing, I'm just little ol' Jen studying machines (or something like that). And he's so crazy gorgeous, he must already be taken (those cute little dimples...the intense way he stares into your eyes and invites you to drown in his...the way he steps inside your personal box and gets really close when talking to you...his shy, almost embarrassed demeanor when not talking in contrast to his forceful personality on stage and confidence when he's telling you about his music and his life...oye!), and even if he wasn't, what makes me think that he'd think I'm any different than any of the other thousands of girls he meets weekly on tour, all of whom I'm sure also fall head over heels for him, and many of whom I'm sure he'd much rather like...tear....

I feel a little bit better now that I've gotten that out. I'll save the concert details for my 'Nique story (I'll post a link here next Friday when the paper comes out), but I will mention a few other cool things, namely some of the cool people we met while hanging out at the Roxy for nine hours or so: Bernard, the large security gaurd who stood post by us -- he was hilarious and regulated for us because some stupid whiney girls around us were being stupid and whiney, and he told them so. Ha!; Kristen, the cool girl who goes to Georgia State and rode MARTA by herself to the concert, so we gave her a ride home. She was really sweet and fun to talk to while waiting for the show to start. Carrie, the 31-year-old woman who also went to the concert by herself. She used to be a fifth grade teacher and now works for an insurance company. Looked exactly like Jessica, I even waved to her when I first saw her because the similarities were so striking. She just thought I was super friendly. hehe.

I guess the whole Gavin thing won't really work out anyway, since I'm already in love with someone else (I'm sorry Gavin...maybe if you sing "Follow Through" or "Belief" to me while lying next to me, I could change my mind...:) ), who I really do love. But I have to admit that sometimes, when staring into the pooling brown eyes of a rock star with an incredibly built body, I get distracted and forget momentarily...I think it's a normal thing, though. Sigh. Even though I have love, I still feel like...frustrated when I think about things like stardom, Gavin, unattainable things that are only unattainable because of social constructs like "popularity" and "millionare" (not that that's what's keeping me and Gavin apart) and "stardom" -- they're so arbitrary. These guys were all so achingly normal and average -- it didn't seem right that they were more deserving of "fans" and the perks of fame; not that they didn't deserve it, but it just seemed weird.

So, enough of my oogling and googling about Gavin. I'll just let him keep running through my mind. It almost hurts to listen to his CD now because I love him and it so much and the music seems to mean so much more to me now that I've listened to it all summer in my car while I was missing my real true love, and now that I've heard it live, know more about his motivations behind the words he wrote, and saw the emotion in his face while playing the songs that are bringing him to the world.

Aye, oye, sigh, oomph.

Goodnight world. Give me the strength to confront the mean people in my life who make me feel uncomfortable...I hope I'm making the right decision by choosing to talk about it. We shall see. I'll keep you faithfully updated, though, mr. blog man man, promise. :)

Whoa, so I just opened up blogger to write a post and a friendly new layout greeted me. It's the old layout. I like the old layout. When blogger was being updated and changed, I was greeted with a boring blank box for posting in, and now it looks more like it did way back when, when I first started blogging, only now it's even spiffier with a cool blue color scheme. Yum.

While I thoroughly enjoyed my fall break-age, I hate being lulled into a false sense of relaxed security just to be thrown back into the fast paced reality of the world four days later. Saturday J and I went to Amicalola Falls (the heighest waterfall east of the Mississippi, or so they say) and hiked to the top of the falls and back down. It was very, very cool, a fun hike and a gorgeous view all along the way. The leaves are starting to change, and wear their full red and orange fall colors at the top of the mountains. With the slight misting fog resting in the tops of the mountain that lifted by the time we started hiking back down, the scene was just perfect. The whole hike it seemed J and I talked about this coming summer - both of us has lots of ideas, dreams, and expectations for what we want our summers to be like, and it's been difficult to figure it all out. Even though summer is still really far away, we're both the types of people who want it figured out right now.

I, for example, wanted to do the Costa Rica study abroad program, but it has a BIO 1510 prereq, and since I refuse to take it next semester because I feel like I would be bored out of my mind (did Envirothon and AP Bio teach me nothing? I mean really, I feel as though I could take the midterm and the final and be done with it, but noooo you have to go to class and lab and all that other stupidity), I cannot do the program. Oye. So much for monkeys and white water rafting. Eh, I've been there done that.

So now I'm going back to my original thought, which was to do a language school abroad to learn French. Why French, I've asked myself many times. Well self, I've said to myself, you want to work or live abroad, somewhere in Western Europe, most likely in Belgium or France, and even if not in those two countries, in almost all W.E. countries, the people speak French (if they don't speak English as well!), and while I like Spanish a lot and already have a very rudimentary knowledge of it (by "rudimentary," I mean, what Senora Levenberg taught me in two years of high school spanish), I just have a greater desire to learn French. So, I'll go with that gut instinct. Plus, I really want to travel around Europe more like I did two summers ago, and you can't really travel that easily around Latin America (if I were to study Spanish there); I still want to see Italy and more of Switzerland, and Austria and ..... so, yeah, French it is. The place I think I want to go is Nice, France (along the southern coast, near Monaco) because this school is located in Nice and seems super cool. I want to go for 10 weeks, and since I'm an absolute beginner, I think I'd be able to come back with a basic knowledge of the language (probably equivalent to 2-3 semesters of class at Tech). So that's the plan for now. We'll see how it goes... It is fun to think about having 3 months to do anything in the world I want to...what's my wildest dream? I can do it. I can. Work in a national park cleaning trails? Sure. Volunteer at an animal shelter? Mkay. Ahhhh.

Anyway, so Saturday night was spent in Lawrenceville and Sunday was spent cooking Crunchy Garlic Chicken (from my Betty Crocker cook book, of course) and watching Jerry Maguire on TBS, and then Monday was chores, chillin, cooking more Betty Crocker goodness, and watching You've Got Mail on TBS. And of course, many baseball games were watched during the weekend. So, while it wasn't anything super exciting, I enjoyed just hanging out and relaxing and not thinking about school.

Have I mentioned that I have an obsession with TLC's "A Wedding Story"? Because I definitely do. The show fascinates me, and I love to watch it because it's so pure and free of the violence, hatred, and idiocity that pervades most prime time shows. It's just about love and family and being happy. Ahhh. Can't I live in a closet of ignorance to the real world so that I can enjoy and blissful existence?

That's all for now - I'm going to bed so I can continue my streak of like 11 hours of sleep a night. Goodnight world!