So what occurred this morning was a prime example of how a person can be just completely not clued into life (that person being me). Winter has taken Buffalo by full force since we have gotten back and although it was pretty chilly last night I kept insisting to my best friend Karen that it was really only like 42 degrees out, according to my WeatherBug. For all of you who do not live your life by WeatherBug like I do it is this fun desktop program that you can have on your computer that keeps a little spot right by your clock on your screen and tells you the temperature of a selected location, it also alerts you of an weather advisory alerts by flapping its little wings (something that can become a tad irritating during the winter in Buffalo because every two seconds it tells me there is snow within a 50 mile radius). But so anyway, my WeatherBug told me the the temperature yesterday was 42 and this morning was 40, little did I forget that I had changed the location when I went home. So I’m really glad Albany is enjoying 40 degrees weather when in fact it is really only like 30 degrees here, and for anyone living in the Northeast, those ten degrees can mean a lot.

But beyond my sincere lack of awareness of the world around me, we had another program thrown by Hall Council last night and it went great! We have been raising money for the Toys for Tots program in the Buffalo area for the last few weeks and we have been collecting money several different ways. The first is that we have trash bags in every hallway of every floor in every building all over Porter for the residents to put their cans and bottles in. We then take the cans and bottles and return them to Wegmans and get the money back. The Eboard of Hall Council has also been going around and collecting any spare change from the residents that we will eventually roll and bring to the bank in order to get money. All of this is to eventually buy toys to give to local kids that otherwise wouldn’t have a present this holiday season. So last night was the third part of our fund-raising, a program called Pie Your RA. We collected RA’s from the Porter buildings and for a dollar you could buy a plate of whip cream to get back at your favorite (or least favorite) RA. We also sold whole can’s for ten dollars. It was a huge success! We made a lot of money for the toys and everyone had a great time!! Our Hall Director, Jeff, and Assistant Hall Director, Adam, even got into it!! The only drawbacks are that the Locked Lounge had a milky stench to it afterwards. Here is a picture I took on my phone of one of the RA’s and a friend of mine, Jay, who just got slammed with a few plates-full.

Okay onto lunch with a friend, I’m STARVING! (And I’m sure my Mom is rolling her eyes thinking “isn’t that a surprise”). OH, and one more exciting thing! Today when I was walking to class there was snow on the ground! They were little patches, and very few and far between but they were there! It was rather exciting!

Happy Turkey Day, Black Friday and any other holiday you might be celebrating this week!! I hope you have all had your fair share of turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce as I have. Thanksgiving week at the Barbour residence was as entertaining as usual, there’s never really a dull moment here. We are loud and often intimidating but you have to love us!

I know everyone has their little holiday rituals, ours went un-interrupted this year. I slept until 11:30 which was sooo nice!! I’m usually up and functioning by 7:15 when I’m at school so sleeping in is a nice change. We had the Thanksgiving meal after we were all showered and dressed (and the parade was over, of course!). After we were all ready to explode from food, the football game went on and then it was naptime. It’s things like these that make everything a little better. Traditions that although we all joke about them and they make some people crazy, they give us something to look forward to, something to depend on, no matter how crazy life gets. It was good to see my family, and this vacation I didn’t really answer my phone, I didn’t go online, I didn’t stalk my facebook or myspace (like I’m sure we are all guilty of) and it was an awesome idea. It felt great to spend time snuggling and watching Grey’s Anatomy with my sisters, talking with my parents and catching up on time with my Aunt’s, Uncle and Grandmother.

It’s back to school tomorrow and I’m glad and sad as usual. It’s always not a great feeling to leave home but I will be back in three weeks so that makes it a little easier. I miss Buffalo, it really has become home to me and I miss having everyone around. A few of my friends and I have tickets to a concert tomorrow in downtown Buffalo for a group called Paramore (a punk rock band). I am SO excited for it so I’m sure there will be lots to tell about that!

Have a safe trip back for all those travelling and feel free to share any of your traditions I’d be interested to hear them!! =)

And we are home free!!!!!!!!!!!

Research paper was just finished & printed out a few minutes ago and now that all lays in front of me is a few classes tomorrow, a four and a half hour stretch of the New York State Thruway and the most dreaded thing of all…packing. I have to say the euphoric feelings of finishing my paper lasted only a few seconds before I realized I now I had to start in on packing. I’m only going to be gone for what, six days? But seriously, there are very few things in the world that I hate more than packing and unpacking. They are some of the moments in my life that I truly wish I was Sabrina the Teenage Witch and could point and make all my stuff get in my duffel bag. So I decided to procrastinate and sit down to write a post!! Aren’t you lucky!!!

I went shopping on Sunday and for anyone who knows me knows that’s a big step. I am one of those people that seems to spend large amounts of money without actually stepping foot in a mall. No, I don’t on-line shop, I just spend money on stupid things, but I’m getting better! But shopping is one of those things that comes close to packing on the hatred list but not quite, because I can tolerate it for small amounts of time, OR if I find what I need which was what Sunday was. My roommate and one of my best friends headed down to the Galleria Mall (for those of you who are not native Western New Yorkers, the Galleria is a HUGE mall-comparable to Crossgates in Albany, if anyone is familiar with that) for what was actually only my second visit to that mall during my entire career here at UB. Which I guess says something about how much I really don’t like shopping. BUT I was excited because I got a really cute coat, and also got awesome presents for my parents for their birthdays. My parents are hands down two of the hardest people to buy for, no correction my Mom is the hardest person to buy for, I love her but it’s impossible. However, last year I did really well with a really nice sweater and I think I did pretty well this year too, maybe I’m just getting better as I get older. It always is nice to get her what she wants, she does a lot for our family and oddly, it makes me really happy to actually get her something she really appreciates. My Dad on the other hand is one of those people that you could hand him a pile of garbage and he would look at it like you just handed him a plate-full of gold, he’s just one of those guys. He’d use it too, the pile of garbage, just so that you wouldn’t think he didn’t appreciate it. But no, just in case you were wondering I didn’t get a pile of garbage.

I am excited to get home though. I haven’t been home in just about three months and although it doesn’t sound like it, that’s a really long time. You realize it’s little things that mean the most, those are the things that you will miss the most when your away. Me, I miss my crazy kitten running back and forth through the house, my brother coming up from the basement announcing he has won yet another video game, the sound of my Dad coming in from work, waking up to my Mom taking her fifteen minutes to herself in the morning with her Solitaire game on the computer and of course, getting lost in a pile of arms, legs and blankets while watching re-runs of cheesy Lifetime movies on the TV with my sisters. Yeah, you can say there’s more than just a few things I’m looking forward to getting back to. Also, Thanksgiving is the holiday that we spend with my Dad’s side of the family and it’ll be really nice to see them. My godfather and aunt along with my two little cousins live in California and didn’t get to come out last year due to work conflicts so I haven’t seen them in almost two years! I can’t imagine how big the girls have gotten! It’s weird to think they haven’t seen me since before I started college, hm time goes by too fast.

Well, I have to say I have had some non-sense posts, but that one takes the cake! I guess you can tell that there’s less than 24 hours before I’m back at home so that’s seriously the only thing on my mind right now! If I don’t get a chance to post before the big T-day, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving! Don’t forget what we all have to be grateful for, I know I won’t!!!!

It’s official! The first snow! Okay so it has flurried a little bit before this but I personally don’t think it really counts until it is stuck on the ground and I can look at it the next morning. Which was what happened last night. It was actually really pretty because it wasn’t that cold and yet was still snowing, those are the nice nights!

I think I’m going to beat Aaron to talking about this but he’ll be able to give a better perspective of what went on backstage and such. The Buffalo Chips performed last night to a packed theater in the Union. For those of you who haven’t read Aaron’s blog or haven’t heard of the Buffalo Chips before they are our male acapella group here on campus. And I have to say, they are really good. It was an awesome show and cool to see some of our friends up on stage doing something that they are really into. There was also a girl group there called Ladies First from Michigan State, they were so good as well! There was one girl that had an amazing voice and then another who I swear sounded just like Mandy Moore. It was a good time!

Alright time to get back to the research paper, that did not have much progress made on it the other day, however I did make it out of the library alright!! ((2 more days))

First off let me say that I don’t know why the webpage keeps doing this to me and why that ^ big space is right there so I apologize!

This week has been filled with all sorts of different activities! The UB Bulls pulled away a win for their home opener on Tuesday night! It was a lot of fun! It was the first basketball game at UB that I had been to. I’m not sure what was with me last year but as a freshman I didn’t seem to get involved in to many things like the basketball games or the rest of the cool stuff that college seems to offer. We played Southern Florida so there wasn’t really an opposing crowd and I think that is half the fun of basketball games, especially for a while the game was really close. After Thanksgiving break we play schools like Canisus and I’m sure that’ll be a lot of fun because they are just up the road so it will bring out a lot of opponent fans!

On Wednesday UB hosted our third speaker of this years Distinguished Speaker Series, Steven Levitt. For those of you who don’t know, Steven Levitt is the author of a book called Freakonomics. It takes a more contemporary look at economics, answering questions that you wouldn’t think of traditional economists of answering. I was really excited for him to come because senior year of high school my Economics teacher had encouraged us to read Freakonomics. Since I needed as many extra points as I could scrape up in that class I gladly accepted the offer and it turned out I fell in love with the book. How can you not love a book where one of the chapters is, “Why Drug Dealers still live with their Mom’s”?! For those of us who are more than a little business deficient, this book kept your attention with witty remarks and taking a different look at everyday occurrences. It was a good time and he was just as good of a speaker as he was an author!

Than last night three of my best friends and I went to see the movie Hairspray in the Student Union theater. I have to tell you, I not only fell more in love with Zac Efron (from High School Musical) but I rediscovered my guilty pleasure for “musicals with no point” (as my roommate would call it). I have been a Rent fan forever (so much so that if at anytime Broadway needs me to step in, I could fill in for any one of the Rent characters-just a thought for anyone who might have connections!! just kidding…kind of) and also have an extensive collection of Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Cats on my Ipod. Not that Les Mis and High School Musical are on the same playing field at all but they play to different audiences, and I love them both equally. Also, as you might have noticed from my reoccurring life theme of spending a night every week or so in the SU theater, I’m really loving this whole free movie thing. I’m sure my Dad would love to know that the tuition dollars that he is shelling out is being put to good use but I have to say, at least I’m enjoying myself!

I have a research paper that I have to write this weekend, some thing I’m not sure how I feel about yet. It shouldn’t be that hard, it’s for my Catholicism class and on a topic that should be pretty interesting to research but all I really want is for it to be done because after this I am home free until Thanksgiving break so this is my last big project until a few nice days at home ((4 more days)). So right now I’m going to go hunt down a librarian in Capen because I am not going to try and find my books on my own, or I’d be wandering around for days! (Just in case I don’t find a librarian and I go for it on my own, if I don’t post for a few days…please alert the University, it means I’m lost in a sea of research books! Thank you!)

Today was long and tiring and the night is only beginning as I look at the piles of work that need to be done but it’s okay it was worth it!

Discovery Day was today at UB and like I said before it’s kind of like a mini Open House. There were all sorts of departments with information tables set up along both sides of the wall stretching the entire length of the Center for the Arts. I was at the “Ask the Expert” table for a little bit and then moved onto tours. I gave three of them which is why I’m so tired tonight but that’s okay. My tours today rocked! It’s always awesome when you get really good people on your tours, it makes my job SO much easier! And that’s exactly what today was, which was so good!

Also tonight my dad came up to Buffalo to do some work and so we got a chance to go out to dinner together in between my tours and my night class. It was nice to see him, a little taste of home to hold me over until Thanksgiving break ((8 days)) Like I said before it’s an interesting relationship that your parents and you develop when you get older and go away to school. It might not happen at first, it’s a very gradual process, with a lot of bumps along the road, because let’s admit it, we all make mistakes. But it’s really an awesome thing that my parents and I have now. I will always be their first baby girl, but as I get older I feel like my voice means more when I speak up. Not that it didn’t before when I was younger, but it’s a different kind of conversation that occurs between us now, almost one that would occur between equal adults as opposed to one occurring between a father and his daughter. It’s hard to explain and I’m sure I’m making very little sense but I hope there are at least a few of you out there, parent or child alike, nodding your head, smiling, because you know exactly what I mean. I don’t know what relevance this had but it’s just one of those things that happens as you grow up and I thought I’d divulge into it a little.

On another note the first UB Men’s Basketball game at home is tomorrow night and I’m totally pumped! I played basketball all when I was younger and even coached a little girl’s team sophomore year of high school. I miss playing but I am a die hard fan and as big of a football fan as I am, I enjoy watching basketball games even more. And if any of you are college basketball fans, our UB Bulls aren’t too shabby which makes it even more exciting!

Alright onto cramming for those two tests tomorrow, it’s going to be one lonnngg night so I might as well get started now =(

Like I said before this week has been pretty low-key. On Thursday night a friend and I went to go see a sneak preview of the new movie, The Kite Runner, in the Student Union. It is based on a novel that came out a few years ago. It was SO good. I did not expect the movie to follow the book so closely and to do it so well. I was really impressed. Plus, it didn’t hurt that I was seeing this movie for free again, which is just another nice bonus of being a student here at UB.

Today also officially ends the first program that us as a Porter Hall Council put on. I don’t think I’ve talked about it yet, so I’ll explain what it is. The program was called Asoxination and it’s not only a ton of fun but it also is a great way to get people talking who usually wouldn’t talk, or give kids who live near each other something to talk about where they usually wouldn’t have spoken. The way Asoxination works is that after people have signed up to participate, we use an Excel program to assign people to other students living in the Porter residence halls. So during the day in the Porter residence halls people are going after other people to asoxinate them. The way that you asoxinate a person is you literally throw a sock at them. Then you, the person you asoxinated and a witness signs a “death certificate” and that person is then out. The winner is the last one standing. It is a really cool game and a lot of fun so we were glad that we got such a good response from the residents for the first program.

Monday is Discovery Day here at UB, so us Tour Guides are going to be QUITE busy! Discovery Day is kind of like a smaller version of Open House for any prospective students and parents that couldn’t make it to Open House in October. I’m excited for it! This is my first experience with all of these events as a tour guide! Let’s hope I don’t mess it up too bad! I shall let you know how it goes….=)

Ah! I can breath a little easier now. I signed up for classes on Saturday morning and got them all so next semester is looking pretty good! The way that registration for class works here at UB is that after you have joined us here on campus (after your first semester) you are in complete control of signing up for and getting the classes that you want to take. Which teachers, which classrooms, how big the lecture, the time which you take those classes…all up to your discretion. The dates in which your registration window opens (or the date that you can begin to register for classes) is done upon a scale dependent of how many credits you have, so the way it typically works is that seniors get first pick of classes, juniors next…so on and so forth. This means that if you are a person that likes to have a block of 5 hours of classes without a break you can make your schedule accordingly, or if your like me and like big breaks in between classes (gives me time to get locked away in the library) you can do that. The registration program opens at 7 am everyday and so at 6:45 am on Saturday morning I was sitting at my laptop armed with my cell phone (there is an on-line program and a telephone program, I like BYRD, the phone program better) and registration numbers of the classes that I wished to take. I was nervous because there were only 4 seats left in my Sociology of the Family class that I wanted to take and yet due to my quick acting fingers I got it! Other classes that I have signed up for are things like Psychology of the Personality and Social Psychology. I love my majors!!

An update for all of you who were wondering (because I know that you were sitting on the edge of your seats) the Patriots pulled away in the last 3 minutes of the football game to win it 24-20 over the Colts. And in UB sports news, the UB Bulls basketball team killed the Buffalo State Bengals in an exhibition game on Friday night. *yay for basketball season starting* And the Bulls football team was handed a loss in Ohio from the University of Miami, OH RedHawks. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was a sports fan.

And in other news Buffalo has our first snowfall predicted for tonight or tomorrow. Although Mr. Weatherman says that it is in the low 40’s today it doesn’t feel that cold in the sun which is always a pleasant surprise! But keep a look out, we might be having our first snowfall in the next couple of days! If there is I’ll definitely let you know!

So my lack of a post is due to the fact that Friday night my baby sister (and by baby I mean 17 years old) surprised me with a visit for the weekend. It was exactly what I needed, especially because sometimes you get to college and get caught up in everything, it’s easy to forget how important family really is. Like I’ve said before, my sisters are my other halves (and yes I know that is mathematically incorrect-to have more than 2 halves). There’s something special about the glances exchanged by the three of us, the stupid things that make us laugh and the moments that absolutely no one will ever understand except us. It was a awesome weekend and definitely making me even more anxious for Thanksgiving break, it’ll be nice to be home again, even if just for a short period of time.

I forgot due to the busy weekend I haven’t had a chance to talk about Halloween! So everyone says your never to old to go trick-or-treating, yes well here in Buffalo we hold that true. Four of my friends and I went out to a neighborhood in a local town and went around in search for that chocolate. It was a great time! We went as an Indian, Hayley Williams {lead singer of a group called Paramore *one of my favorites*}, a golfer, Leela {a character from the cartoon show Futurama}and Tom Brady {moi}. Here are some pictures as proof (for those of you that might not believe that college sophomores really did this):

This week is looking a little bare, which for once, I’m excited about! It’ll give me a great chance to chip away at some of my research papers that aren’t due until the end of the semester but I really need to get some work done on so that it doesn’t pile up. Something that I have found is the key to college, take the down time in between tests to get a little bit done from bigger projects.

HUGE Patriots game against the Colts this afternoon. Right now they are down 3-0 at the end of the 1st quarter. *Let’s go New England*