Another fun night this week: Last night I went to see HARRY POTTER in Memphis on IMAX! How awesome is that? The movie started at 10:25, and Amy, Brittany, and I left Jackson a little after eight. When we got there, there was a line to get into the movie. They weren't letting people in yet; I guess they were cleaning up from the last show. We got really good seats. Emily and Cody came in later. We had to wave at them for practically a full minute before they saw us. Haha. Anyway, the movie was amazing. I cried at the end (with good reason, no matter what Brittany says... ;P ). They did an awesome job with casting once again. Voldemort was so creepy; it was perfect. I kept getting chills! After the movie, we drove back to Union. Unfortunately, I had to use one of my "passes" since we came back so late. Our curfew is two o'clock, and we came in around four. Amy had already used one of hers; we were going to hide her in the back. However, they only asked for my ID. She was asleep anyway.

Looking at my last post, I remembered that I came close to being that tired last semester when I was still in high school. I had a research paper due on Monday. What do you think I did? Waited until the Sunday before, of course! I think I skipped church that night, and I still didn't finish it until around three in the morning. Besides that, I had to get up at FIVE that morning. Our high school has a Great Pretenders show every year; it's a fundraiser for Project Graduation where the seniors and/or their parents perform or lip-sync songs...that's the very basic idea. Well, my mom was in charge of that. I don't know whose idea it was, but someone got the local news station to do a kind of promo the Monday of the week of Great Pretenders. We have a Good Morning West Tennessee every morning at six; I was the lucky person that got to get on the show and try to advertise our show. That meant a five o'clock wake-up call -- maybe it was actually four thirty. Either way, you get the picture. So I'm sitting on the couch in front of the cameras with news guy and the man that ran our show. I have had practically no sleep, and the news guy asks me what some of the different acts are. Oh man. I couldn't even remember my own act at that moment, much less anyone else's! I looked up at the five thousand watt lights on the ceiling and say, "Uh.....Spice Girls?" Lol. I looked so retarded. I was dead tired that day in school. I slept through a lot of my classes.

The moral of my story is: Sleep is good. So is staying up all night just because you want to. I don't regret staying up all night Monday night; it was fun. There's nothing to say I won't do it again. I won't this semester, don't worry. I may not next semester either. I have an essay that I'm supposed to be doing right now. It's not due until Tuesday, and it's just a rough draft. However, I want to get it done and over with so that I don't have to worry about it anymore. I'll try to get to that.

P.S. One more month left until I go to the doctor's to get cleared!!

This has been a crazy day. Well, it actually started out as a crazy night. I was up in Amy's room last night when she proposed that we stay up all night. That sounded like fun, so that's what we did. We got really delirious, and I actually created a PowerPoint presentation about it. If you want to see it, I'll try to e-mail it to you. Amy actually ended up going to bed around 5:45; I went downstairs and worked on the presentation. I never did go to sleep. I had class at 9:25; I slept through about half of the class and didn't even know it. I have never been that tired in my life.

I went to sleep not long after I got back from class. I woke up around 2:45 to rain pounding on my window and a siren: tornado warning. Gaines and I went into the bathroom. Everyone else was gone. I called to check on everyone; a couple of the girls from upstairs had knocked on the door, but Gaines and I were both dead asleep. Storms have never scared me, but I'll have to admit that I was a little worried. I was mainly worried about the other girls. I couldn't get hold of Amy, and no one knew where Kayla was. When Gaines and I had been in the bathroom for about thirty minutes, we came out for a little while. We heard a knock on the door. We opened it to find Emily and Amy; they had ran from the PAC to our dorm. Crazy girls. After that, we all went back into the bathroom. I think we were in there for an hour. It was around that. Gaines was sitting on the toilet, I was on the edge of the bath, and Amy and Emily were sitting on my pillows in the bath. We finally came out because we were hungry...lol. Around four they said it was safe to come out of the bathroom. Not long after that, I went to bed.

Amy woke me up at 5:40. We had planned on eating out with some of the soccer girls, but I thought we probably wouldn't go because of the weather. However, Amy told me that I had twenty minutes to get ready. I jumped in the shower, and Emily, Heather, Amy, and I went to pick up Cheslie. We met Nikki, Cynthia, and Jennifer at Snappy Tomato Pizza. I brought my laptop, and we watched the presentation I made about last night. It's so random. You have to understand that I was completely delirious when I made it. Anyway, after we got back from eating, I went straight to my room to study. I went straight to my room, but I didn't go straight to studying. I'm definitely going to bed early. I'm hoping for ten, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

This is such a glorious Friday! Nanny is getting out of the hospital, Buddy's coming home, and it's just a BEAUTIFUL day. Nanny still has to do therapy while she's at home, but she's improved amazingly. Her legs are mainly weak; when she started hurting, she stopped using them. I think the pain is almost gone, which is such a blessing. I know she's ecstatic about that.
Buddy is coming home with Luke, which made it easier for me! He told me to decide what we were going to do this weekend, and I could not decide. I'm so indecisive about almost everything.

There was something else....oh yeah! I got a letter in my Union mailbox from Ambassadors in Sports. The missionary-in-residence here at Union told me about playing soccer as a form of missions. It sounds awesome to me! In the letter they said, "as a brother in Christ..." That's so wrong. Even Union sends me stuff about the Strongest Man competition. They can't seem to comprehend that Daron could be a female. I guess it usually is a male name, but it does go both ways...I don't. Anyway, I really want to check this out. Of course, Mom and Dad won't particularly be thrilled...money.

I guess that's it. Maybe I should leave it for a while and see if I remember something else later....but I won't torture you.

Well, I've had a pretty busy week. I went to my first YoungLife Club last Monday night. That was fun. I had no idea what to expect, but I was excited and a little nervous. The kids were a little crazy; it was Halloween. They did enjoy throwing the candy back and forth at each other. We were singing songs, and they put up the words for "Free Falling". Our leader asked a couple of the guys to introduce the new girls (me and two other girls) to the song. My first thought was, "I know this song. Why did he ask them to introduce us to it?" I got my answer when we got to the first chorus. One of the guys standing next to me bent down and SCREAMED in my ear, "AND I'M FREE!!!!" Ouch. That was definitely interesting. The next night we had our last Quest meeting, which is training for YoungLife leaders. We discussed our experiences and what we thought about it.

Wednesday my grandmother on my dad's side, Nanny, was admitted into the hospital for surgery at 8 in the morning. Around 11:00 I went to see how it was going. She wasn't out of surgery yet, so I just hung around talking to my parents and Aunt Gail. I had to get back to school for my 12:00 class. I also had a meeting with my soccer coach at 2:30 that afternoon. That went okay; nothing special. I ate before my meeting, because I hadn't eaten earlier. At around 4 I headed back to the hospital to check on Nanny again. When I got there, her condition wasn't the best. Her throat hurt from the tube they stuck in, and her back was hurting from where they made the incision. Oh, yeah, I forgot to say.....she had a ruptured disk in her back that was killing her legs. At first she thought it was arthritis, but they evidently took x-rays and found otherwise. Her surgery was made complicated by the fact that there were a ton of ligaments grown over the disk. After surgery her legs did feel better, but that was overshadowed by pain elsewhere. Wednesday night I was there for two hours. She was trying to go to sleep, but she was in so much pain that it was very difficult. When I left the hospital I went directly to my dorm. Brittany called, and I talked to her for a minute. I didn't feel like talking a whole lot. Being at the hospital depressed me. Nanny was nearly helpless because of the pain; it just kills me when someone else is hurting, whether it be mentally, physically, or emotionally. I couldn't do anything to help her. I also talked to Buddy, but that wasn't for very long either. I think I worried him a little. Anyway, I ended up going to bed at TEN, which I never do. I didn't get to sleep until 10:45; Amy came in at 11:15 or so, because I had sent her a message that I needed to talk to her. We had a great talk that lasted until past midnight. After that, I went back to sleep.

Thursday I can't really remember what I did. That's weird...oh, yeah! Sorry. I went to my one and only class then went to Lambuth to visit Brittany! That's what I did. That was a blast. I got to meet several of her friends; they were cool. Now I seriously can't remember what I did that night. This is just sad. I really just called Amy to ask what I did, and she told me. I had to finish my stupid essay for Written Comp. They were causing a ruckus upstairs, and I kept calling Amy to tell them to be quiet. It didn't work. I finally finished it, so that was good. It seems like I did something else that night. I did go to an English major/minor meeting at 2:30 that afternoon.

We went camping Friday night. It was two of my roommates, one of their sisters, Amy, one of her roommates, and me. Just six of us. We all enjoyed that, even though we left the food in Gaines's car, and she drove off with it. We had to come back here and cook breakfast instead of doing it at the campsite like we had originally planned. I burned my hand that night as I was trying to fix the fire. It was a stupid move, I know. I wasn't burned too badly. It did blister a little bit, so it was almost a second degree burn.

Saturday night I travelled back to H-don for a birthday party. It was my best friend's boyfriend's birthday. We ate and played games from 6:30 to past eleven. I left at eleven, because I had to get back to Union. Today I went to church and hung out with Amy. It was definitely a crazy week. I knew I wouldn't have trouble filling up the time left by the end of soccer season. I worked out yesterday, so I'm a little sore from that. I told Amy, who went with me, that I was sore; she said, "Why are you sore from working out?" I looked at her, then said, "Because I haven't done anything in TWO WEEKS!" "Oh, yeah." She went running, and I rode my bike beside her. It kind of made me sad that I couldn't be running beside her, instead of riding my bike beside her. I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm resting now so that I can play a thousand times better later. After I catch up on running and everything, that is. I can't remember what it's like to really play soccer. And I'm gonna leave it at that.

So, that is my insane week in a nutshell. It's not really half of what went on, but you get the idea. Oh, yeah, I'm coughing my head off as well. It started some time in the middle of last week. I really started coughing Friday or Saturday. Being around the fire Friday night definitely didn't help. Anyway, I'll stop now. I think I've written quite enough.