I think that's the first time I've ever stayed up until 3 AM on purpose

Kind of a busy day yesterday! Well, busy night anyway... the day part was pretty normal, aside from the dining hall actually having pasta for once (tortellini for lunch!)  Only bad thing: I found out that I have yet another painting homework assignment, and it's even worse than just painting--not only do I have to paint something, I have to write a freakin' paper.  Only one page, but still!

Anyway, I ended up going to the homecoming concert (with the school's band/choir), which was good but very crowded... got a bit uncomfortable at some points, thanks to there not being any seats left by the time I got in there.  I did end up standing with Ruth at the back of the room though, so I was at least around someone I knew (which probably helped keep me from freaking out from the crowding.)  After that, it just so happened that Ruth was going to go watch a movie (in a room in Durham with a projector screen... apparently laptops can be connected to the projectors here at school, I didn't know that!) with some friends, and one of them ended up not being able to go, so I tagged along in her place.

Originally we were just going to watch one movie, but then somehow it turned into two movies, heh... so we were in there until close to 1:30 AM.  First we watched Howl's Moving Castle, which I had never seen or even really heard of before (I had heard the title before, and Ruth has mentioned it before... but that's about it.)  It's the first Miyazaki (...I hope I spelled that right) movie I've ever seen, and I thought it was pretty good (very, very weird, but definitely good!)  After that we watched Little Shop of Horrors (the '70s?/'80s? musical version), which I've heard a lot about from my sister (who had seen it before) but had never actually watched before.  So now I've finally seen the "giant singing carnivorous plant" movie. XD

So... yeah, we ended up staying up until 1:30 watching movies.  And eating some random mandarin oranges that the other girl (Melanie, I think?) brought along with her.  She also brought forks (and not even plastic forks, real metal forks!), which was really convenient since reaching into that can to get those tiny little oranges with your hands could get a little messy.  Also got to try "Whales," which are basically exactly the same thing as Goldfish crackers except... shaped like whales.  And after the movies and food, we all walked back up to the lofts and ended up staying up until somewhere around 3 AM just talking and goofing off.  Melanie brought out her laptop and we ended up watching several really ridiculous videos of people doing silly dance moves that I had never heard of.  Eventually she went off to bed, but me and Ruth stayed out there another half-hour or so afterward just talking about random stuff... and of course, before she left we hugged (seems like this happens a lot lately, heh... did not want to let go this time, partly because I really like her and I really like hugs... but also because it was getting a little cold out and I didn't have a jacket with me), and then I started to walk back to Craton to get some sleep.

...and right when I got to the top of the stairs going down from the lofts, I realized I had left my notebooks lying on the ground near the door.  Whoops!  So of course I had to walk all the way back across the parking lot and grab them.  But oh well, overall yesterday was pretty good and I'm looking forward to today.

Homecoming week

...most of which I've ignored so far. XD

But yeah, this week is turning out pretty well even though I haven't been involved at all with any of the homecoming-related stuff that's been going on (a lot of sports-related junk, people dressing up as different things, voting for homecoming king/queen, and so on.)  No new painting homework to add to the endless pile (in this Wednesday's class, we just rearranged and threw out old stuff from the closets), which is a bit less endless now since I finished another assignment (though I still have... three, I think? left to do.)  And I ended up getting a bunch of random books and a metal walking stick (actually an "extension pole," whatever that is, but I've been using it as a metal walking stick so far) during the closet clean-up, since they were going to throw them away and it was okay to take home anything you wanted from the "trash" piles.  Not too much work in the other classes at the moment, either, though I still haven't come anywhere near catching up on the reading for my Institute class (it's on the Book of Mormon, and I've only gotten to chapter 3 of 2nd Nephi... while the class is 20-some chapters further in.)  Jogging's been kind of hard this week due to rain (I really don't want to go jogging in the rain and risk slipping and bashing myself open again...), but if it stops being so wet I should at least be able to get halfway or most of the way there before the week's over.

Oh, and yesterday I finally finished my card thing I've been making...  back around Monday I decided I'd ask Ruth to the homecoming dance by making a card-type thing for her and then putting it somewhere where she'd find it, rather than just handing it to her or asking the usual way.  Wasn't so sure about the idea at first (since that's... kind of close to what I tried with Amber waaaay back in 2004/2005, and of course that didn't turn out all that well), but once I got started actually making the card I just kept going.  Eventually I colored the whole thing (with colored pencils), which had Ruth's name on the front along with a bunch of random decorations, a picture of her (with a half-grass, half-desert background... including skeleton fish XD) on the first inside page, and then on the second page more decorations, a lot of shininess, and a short little note asking her if she'd go to the homecoming dance with me this weekend.  I just happened to bump into her roommates in the library right after I'd finished making it, and got them to sneakily put the card in her room somewhere where she'd find it later.  I'm not entirely sure where they put it, I forgot to ask, but I know she did find it at some point... because around 10:00 last night, I got a text message from her thanking me for the card (apparently she really liked it!) and agreeing to go to the dance with me.  Which, of course, turned into another series of a dozen or so messages back and forth over the next half-hour, in which we decided that we'd go out and eat somewhere together before the dance.  So... looks like I have a third date this weekend! That makes three weekends in a row that I've had dates with her, which I'm still kind of (okay, extremely) surprised by, considering how I thought for a long time that I most likely would never even find a girl who'd agree to one date with me.  I guess I must be better at this sort of thing than I thought, or at least I'm getting a bit less nervous about the whole "asking girls on dates" thing... or at least less nervous about asking Ruth on dates, since she did say yes the first time (and the second, and the third... XD) after all.

Also ran into my first fanatically religious person at SVU.  Who wasn't actually an SVU student, and was a lot nicer than the "angry screaming YER GOIN' TO HELL" type I'm used to, but still... very loud about her beliefs and seemed to be completely unable to see anything from a "non-religious" perspective.  I'm actually not sure if she was a Mormon or some other type of Christian, since she didn't really say anything that seemed "Mormon-specific" to me and only referred to the Bible rather than the Bible and the Book of Mormon, but... oh well.  We ended up talking for a while anyway, but it was a bit uncomfortable at certain points, and apparently she was one of those people with a pretty "black-and-white" view of the world (it seemed like the only two possibilities to her as far as how the world works were "the Bible is God's word and we should follow every single law in there, to the point of disregarding secular authorities entirely!" and "there are no rules! so do whatever you want without any fear of consequences, go crazy and have sex with everything! there's no reason for anyone to be a good person if there isn't one true religion with messages directly from God.")
She said she'd pray for me... if I prayed, I'd probably be praying for her too, because she seemed to need... um, a bit of help.  Reminded me a bit of someone I used to know during her "ultra-religious" phases, and based on what she said about her own life I would not be surprised if there were more similarities than what I actually saw.

Washington DC temple trip

Yep... got up at 6 AM (actually woke up around 5:50-ish) this morning, somehow didn't immediately fall back asleep, and went on the trip up to the Mormon temple in Washington, DC.  Actually didn't turn out bad at all--I was expecting the combination of 6 AM and a crowded bus to pretty much ruin the day for me, but it turned out that I was surprisingly awake for that time of day and the bus wasn't all that crowded after all.  Sat with Ruth the whole way over, talking pretty much constantly (as usual!), playing Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded for a while (I bought it at Wal-Mart several weeks back but hadn't had much time to play it before today; finally done with Traverse Town now!), listening to lots of music from obscure bands/singers I've never heard of before, and finding out that listening to music with one earbud in one person's ear and the other in another person's ear actually works pretty well (I had seen other people do it before, but I just figured it wouldn't really work, for some reason.)

Of course, I wasn't able to actually go into the temple since I'm not a Mormon, but I was able to look at it from outside and take pictures (that building is HUGE.)  Also worked outside some for a service project (digging up plants, replacing with the bulbs for other plants) and looked around a bit in the visitor's center, which had a lot of exhibits (including this really neat model of Jerusalem from ~30 AD, and a table with copies of the Book of Mormon in about a gazillion different languages.)  Ate some generic sandwiches and chips for lunch, and after more visitor's center-ing for a while, rode the bus back to SVU (once again sitting with Ruth the whole way... kind of surprising how well sitting next to someone you like can cancel out the boredom of a 3-and-a-half hour bus ride.)  After we got back, I walked Ruth back up to the lofts once again, and this time she actually hugged me (rather than the other way around)--and it was just completely out of nowhere, right before she was going to leave! I think she must actually like me, since it's not often that someone just randomly hugs me with no warning like that.

Unfortunately, by the time we got back Jonzzey's and the cafeteria were both closed... so I ended up walking down to Domino's and getting a pizza and some cheesy bread.  Probably should've gotten the hand-tossed crust; the thin crust isn't awful but the hand-tossed is way better.  Still need to try their sandwiches (I had planned on it today but was distracted by the lure of a large pizza for even less than what I'd normally have to pay for a small with the same amount of toppings.)

Kong Fu

...which is how my Spanish teacher misspelled "Kung Fu" earlier today, when trying to write "Kung Fu Panda" on the board.  We had to say (in Spanish) what we planned on doing over the weekend, and pretty much all of the class were going to see Kung Fu Panda 2 today, so... that was the first thing that ended up being written on the "stuff people are doing this weekend" list on the board.

Anyway... I went to see Kung Fu Panda 2 earlier today.  Or, I guess I should say, we went to see it... since I kinda asked Ruth if we could go and see it together, kind of like another date I guess.  She finished that giant philosophy paper Thursday and just needed to get it proofread today, so she ended up being able to go after all.  The movie was really good! I'm actually not sure which of the Kung Fu Panda movies I like more, since I really liked both of them (I've seen the first one a couple times, and the second one once now) and I generally have a hard time picking out one of several things I like better when all of them are good.  And of course, me and Ruth sat together and talked the whole time (well, we talked before and after the movie with the occasional short comment during, since during we were usually too busy watching the movie.)  Ended up having to sit directly on the grass, since neither of us had blankets or anything to sit on, heh... started out at normal sitting-next-to-each-other distance at first, but we kind of ended up drifting a bit closer together as the movie went on, though never quite into "guy and girl practically laying ontop of each other" closeness.  Still, we ended up close enough that we'd bump into each other if either of us moved much, while at the start we could both sit cross-legged and neither of us would bump into the other... so she doesn't seem to mind sitting closer than that to me, which is always good.

After the movie was over we talked and walked back up toward the lofts, and while crossing the church parking lot we stumbled upon some random kid's book about an escape-artist hamster, just randomly sitting there in the parking lot, not even run-over or otherwise damaged at all.  Ruth ended up putting it into her bag and taking it with her (though I think she said she'd take it to the lost-and-found tomorrow.)  We always seem to find random odd things laying around on our dates... first the hubcap, and now a book about a hamster.  But anyway, another "first" today--while walking back up the hill, I asked if it was okay if we held hands while we walked... and she had absolutely no problem with it! She actually said her hands were getting cold (she had previously had both of them in her coat pockets), and the one I was holding did feel a bit cold... hopefully I kept her hand a little warmer at least, heh.  We didn't actually hold hands very long, since we bumped into another girl and talked to her a bit on the way up and Ruth was doing the "move hands around as you talk" thing (she does that a lot, heh)... but still, that's the first time I've ever held hands with a girl.  Probably not exactly a huge deal, but I had never done it before, so... just one of those things I figured I'd try now that I actually know a girl who doesn't mind being around me, I guess. XD

And of course, just like the last time, I ended up giving her a hug before she left to go do homework and sleep.  Didn't really ask this time, just held my arms out and said "Hug!"... which I guess is almost like asking but not quite as question-y, if that makes any sense.  But anyway, she pretty much immediately hugged me after that, so I guess that means I don't really need to ask in complete sentences.  XD

After that I ended up going to a bonfire with a bunch of random people (a couple of which I actually knew), where someone stuck a random Italian sausage on a bent coathanger and roasted (more like blackened!) it in the fire.  Someone else brought cold Taco Bell food and reheated that using the fire.  And we listened to lots of random music, talked, moved around to avoid the giant cloud of smoke coming off of the fire... that kind of stuff.  No s'mores this time, but it still worked out pretty well... I ended up leaving around 1:00-ish, though I didn't get back to my dorm room until 1:40 due to standing around talking to random people afterward.  Overall I'd say I had a pretty good day!

Watching paint dry

Yep... with a title like that, you probably already know that I've got painting homework again.  Two new assignments, actually... plus I should probably get around to doing that one from earlier in the semester that I still haven't done, but is pretty much required for a later assignment to work at all.  That class has waaaay too much homework... but at least I'm getting some of it done before the weekend comes around and I won't really be able to work on it much (unless I bring my painting stuff back home with me and work on it there... nah, probably not the best idea.  But I dunno... maybe it could work?)

Signed up for next semester's classes the other day... and I'm already waitlisted for half my credits (second half of Art History, Spanish II, and volleyball.)  And it's only the second week of registration, which is pretty freakin' ridiculous... I kind of expected classes to be at least a little more available this early!  My advisor person told me to try and sign up for "alternate" classes just in case I can't get into either of those, but... that seems kinda weird.  I guess I could try it just in case, since I really don't want to end up with only seven credits worth of classes (and not even qualify as a full-time student, in addition to pushing my graduation back a semester if I can't get into Spanish... because there is no way in hell I'm taking any class, even a relatively easy one, at 8 AM, and that's the only other time Spanish is offered that I could take and that doesn't already have a waitlist.)  At least I got into the other half of my classes, though, and since I signed up pretty early there's a chance other people will drop out or drop off of the waitlist and get me into the class itself (which happened with Art History and Astronomy this semester... problem was I needed to drop Astronomy in the end because it overlapped with that painting class.)

On a better note, it seems like Ruth is probably done with her paper by now and we'll probably be able to go see Kung Fu Panda 2 together tomorrow night after all.  She had the paper in "pretty much done, just needs re-looking-over" state earlier today when we talked about it, so I'm pretty sure she should have it done before tomorrow (she did say before that she wanted to get it done before Thursday, since she didn't want to be distracted by thoughts of homework when she went to see Wicked in... Richmond, I think? a while ago. I'm not sure what city, but it's around 2 hours away from here, so Richmond sounds about right.)  Speaking of Wicked, she really seemed to enjoy that; bad part--she won't be getting back here until 1 AM and has a 7 AM class tomorrow.  I hope she does okay on very little sleep, because there's not a whole lot of time in between there... I know I'd probably be falling asleep on my feet the next day, if I was able to get any sleep at all (I'd have to either take a shower the night before or get up at 5 AM to have time for both that, breakfast, and getting ready for classes... and neither of those really sounds like a great idea.)
And supposedly they're going to have the movie outside tomorrow... not sure exactly how that's going to work.  But I'm going to try and get there a little early and figure out what's going on so we don't end up stuck in a terrible seat or something (and also find out if it actually is outside or not--the last one was supposed to be outside as well, but got moved in because it was going to rain.)

EDIT: ...and, I forgot to jog.  Crap! Got to hurry up and do a little bit of that before bed...

Broke my jogging record again!

Yep... now that these knees aren't bothering me anymore, apparently I can jog not just five but six Buena Vista city blocks in a row without stopping or completely exhausting myself.  And adding it up in my head, I've figured out that if I just did that much every day, I'd make almost 3 miles in a week without any difficulty.  Of course, I'm pretty sure we need either 4 or 4.5 miles by the end of this week... but hey, I've done more than 6 in a day before, even when I couldn't go more than 3 or 4 blocks straight without stopping, so I should definitely be able to pull this off as long as I don't get too distracted by other stuff.

In other news, the food here seems to be slipping a bit in overall yumminess.  The things that were good before are generally still good (though sometimes the salad bar looks a little off; wilty lettuce and such), the problem is that they never seem to have nearly as much good stuff out there anymore.  Just today, I ended up having to eat a sandwich for lunch and a plate of rice and french fries for supper because... the other food just didn't look very good.  Well, there were these enchilada things for supper, but it wasn't clear exactly what was in them and they were sort of buried in an endless ocean of melted cheese, so I didn't risk trying one.  Fortunately there's always something to eat, but it seems like they just aren't having the really good stuff as often anymore.

Painting class: still annoying! Well, this time it wasn't the painting so much as the way the assignment was set up... we had to go to some random parking lot and attempt to get a halfway-decent place to sit and paint something.  That... didn't work very well.  I did paint a really good eyeless, noseless polar bear in a snowstorm (aka blank white page), but that was it.  I'll have to go back later and attempt to get that done some other day this week, since we don't have class Wednesday.

And last of all, I'm seriously considering asking Ruth on a second date sometime.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to at first (kind of afraid it might seem weird to her if I ask again so soon after the first time, like I was trying to rush into a "real" relationship or something), but she really does seem to like me, and apparently she really enjoyed our first date (which I found out thanks to another girl I know, who just happens to be in the same math class as her.)  Sort of thinking about asking her to come watch Kung Fu Panda 2 with me this Friday, since they're showing it here at school (and it's free!)... and possibly walk around for a while in Buena Vista or just around the SVU campus beforehand so we can have some time to just talk, since there's not much opportunity for that during a movie, heh.  She's already seen it once if I remember right, but I haven't, and she's always trying to get me to watch movies that she likes but I haven't seen... so this might work out pretty well!

EDIT: Yep... turns out I sorta asked her on that second date earlier today after supper.  Well, I didn't exactly call it a "date" this time, but I did ask if we could go and watch Kung Fu Panda 2 together this Friday (and surprisingly the question just kind of came out with no real effort... nothing even remotely like the three days of being unable to say anything that I ran into the first time!)... and it sounded like she wanted to but it depended on whether or not she gets all her homework done before then.  She already started on it yesterday, though, so I figure she'll probably be done in time.

I officially can no longer say "I've never been on a date in my life"

Yep... I'm back from my date (well, okay, I got back almost 5 hours ago XD) and I'd say it went pretty well! We met up in front of main hall around 5:50 or so, then walked down into Buena Vista and just talked for a while, wandering around in the streets and looking at random stuff, talking about all the restaurants they have around here and trying to decide which one to go to.  After a little while we decided on this Italian place called (oddly enough) "Original Italian Restaurant."  Yeah, kinda generic name, but the food was good--I had ravioli, she had stuffed shells, and we split some mozzarella sticks (and also the bread and salads that came with the pasta.)  Kind of a funny thing here, she ended up pretty much perfectly cleaning off her plate at the end even though she wasn't able to finish all of her stuffed shells (she took one home in a little styrofoam box)... by picking up one of the pieces of bread and "picking up" all of the sauce from the place with it, then eating the bread.  Talked about tons of stuff, including (of all things) a Harry Potter musical spoof.  Which led to one of the songs from that getting stuck in her head, and then she started randomly singing it while we were walking back.  About that time it started to rain; just kind of a light sprinkle though, so we only really got wet at all because it was such a long walk back up to the lofts from Buena Vista.  Along the way we saw a random hubcap just sitting there on some stairs, and she was going to take a picture of it... so I suggested that I sit on the stairs and get my picture taken next to the hubcap. XD  Yeah, kind of a silly picture, but it worked.  And once we got back up there (and wiped the random raindrops off of both of our glasses), I gave her a hug before she left.  Turns out the whole thing took a little over two hours, I'm guessing most of which was taken up by talking, heh.  So... I think it went pretty well!

And afterward, several people that I bumped into asked me already if there was going to be a second date, and... well, I didn't really think of that at the time, heh... I was still kind of surprised by the fact that I was even having a first date, so the thought of doing it again just didn't really come up at the time.  But hey, who knows? I mean, I'm not sure I want to randomly ask her on a date again so soon after the first time (kinda worried that would make it seem like I was trying to rush into a more "boyfriend/girlfriend"-ish relationship... I dunno), but I definitely wouldn't mind doing something like that again in the future.  And maybe now that I've actually had a completely positive experience with this sort of thing, I might not be so nervous about actually asking girls on dates from now on.  Okay, I'd probably still be super nervous if I tried to ask anyone else on dates (apparently it's normal to go on dates with a bunch of different people, at least before you actually have a boyfriend/girlfriend... seemed a bit odd to me at first but I guess I can get used to it?)... but at least I might not be so nervous about asking Ruth again. XD

After I got back from my date I ended up hanging around at the lofts for a while waiting for my jacket to dry, and just talking to random people.  After a while some other people decided they were going to go see a movie (The Help, about a girl who wrote about the situation that black people hired as maids in the '60s were in, based on stories that she was told by pretty much all of the maids in one town in Mississippi), so I tagged along.  Movie was good; actually the first one I've seen in a theater since 2005-2006 or so.  Ended up eating most of someone else's popcorn because they didn't like it too much... definitely not the best popcorn I've had, but not completely bad either.  And also a Cow Tale (those long caramel-candy-rope things) and some Dr. Pepper.  The medium Dr. Pepper I had seemed to be pretty huge even though it was only a medium, so I have a hard time imagining just how much bigger the large must've been... I wonder if they've increased the sizes of movie drinks again since the last time I saw them, or something.