so, senior year has ended and summer is more than halfway over. less than four weeks left until i move away from home and into mary donlon hall at cornell. so far, i haven't gotten that excited about cornell, especially since we have to read "lincoln at gettysburg: the words that remade america" and write a mini-essay in preparation for our orientation discussion groups. but then, i started reading the new student handbook that came with our orientation packets, and i'm starting to get excited about the amazing campus and being away from home in general. because who hasn't been annoyed by their parents at one time or another? not that i won't miss home, but my mom’s cooking hasn’t ranked in the top ten of anything, ever, let alone the princeton review’s list of best campus food.

one thing i will miss, however, is the television. cornell charges thirty dollars a month for cable, because the "hilly terrain" is not conducive to the school including a few tv channels in our exorbitant room and board fees. most people probably can't afford to pay for that kind of luxury, so i will have to resort to watching gossip girl and america's next top model online the day after a new episode and then calling lynn at penn state to discuss any new developments. they'll probably charge a fortune for the long-distance call. and there's also a limit on the amount of internet you can use, so they'll probably charge me anyways for watching so many videos online.

anyways, this summer i went to california for eleven days to visit relatives, and even though we didn't go to that many places (san diego zoo, disney land, and the beach), it was nice to be able to see my seven-year-old cousin who loves mario kart and his three identical beanie baby lambs, named lullaby one, lullaby two, and lullaby three. very original. the weather was absolutely perfect, low eighties, sunny, and breezy, and allowed me to sunburn nicely at the beach, where i discovered that i am physically incapable of getting a tan. meanwhile, my dad called from the east with accounts of overwhelming humidity, dangerously high temperatures, and violent thunderstorms.

which brings me to my next anecdote. i'm typing this on my laptop in a word document on july 31. i'm not sure when i'll get to actually put this into a xanga entry, since a thunderstorm which occurred right before I came home from california first slowed down our internet connection so much that i couldn't watch any youtube videos without letting them load for twenty minutes beforehand, and then completely cut it off in the middle of my watching the recently released harry potter and the half-blood prince movie trailer (and by recently i mean that it was posted on youtube just minutes before i clicked on it and minutes after it was released to the general public). i only got to see the first thirty-two seconds of the trailer that loaded before my internet connection completely cut off. so we called up verizon, who promised that they'd send a repairman to fix it the very next day. of course, they never showed up. another call led to a promise that they would send someone as soon as possible, and that would be next monday. i simply rely far too much on facebook, youtube, and imdb.com to talk to people i never call, watch videos of the jonas brothers, and read peoples' tirades on the injustice of will's elimination before mark's on the last episode of so you think you can dance. so today, which is thursday, after enduring about 36 hours of not logging into facebook, i brought my laptop to burger king to utilize their free internet access. too bad that for some reason, they websense both facebook AND xanga, so i wasn't able to do much. still, the shock of not being able to get on facebook has worn off, and it's kind of nice not being able to reflexively log on every ten seconds. even though i do have some urgent matters to attend to, such as asking my future roommate if she's going to bring a fan and if she thinks there will be mirrors on the back of the door or in our closets, because of course cornell wouldn't bother including air conditioning in our outrageous room and board rates (granted, ithaca is freezing cold most of the school year anyways, but it will probably still be incredibly hot the first month and possibly the last) and you know, girls always need a mirror. obviously.

among the benefits of not having internet access is the joy of rediscovering reading. the only books i've read for enjoyment in the past three years have been harry potter and gossip girl. this summer, i've read little girls in pretty boxes and the prequel to the gossip girl series (and i hope to start on gossip girl: the carlyles and the it girl sometime. i hope cornell's famed and well-lauded libraries carry intellectual books like these), and right now i'm forty pages away from finishing the devil wears prada, which i have to return tomorrow. so now i'm going to go read about andrea's final act of defiance against miranda priestly so i can watch the elimination episode of so you think you can dance at nine o'clock tonight.

oh yeah and all day I’ve been feeling like since today is the last day of july, I’m forgetting something or missing some sort of deadline. I just realized it’s that I haven’t posted on xanga this month yet, and I always post at least once a month except for one time (gone are the days when I’d post twice a day). Oh well. I guess this will help with my obsessive-compulsiveness.

reflection