the invisible tim

Since there have been so many comments about i don't exist anymore, i must apologize for my disapearance. I never knew school was so busy, ...until I got here. It is great though, because I am really working Hard on my classes for once and accomplishing a lot with them, and with InterVarsity, making new friends, and catching up on the Washington and Jefferson Community. Probably the main reason i have been so busy is my classes. BUT there is great news. I got some of my big grades back today. My giant Environmental Science class Exam that i studied forever for and i thought was really hard i got a 98 on. The class average was a 71, so I was pretty excited. I thought, at best, i got an 85.

To explain my life as usual, i'll give you a story of my past two days.

Yesterday I woke up at 9, ate breakfast, wrote a 3 page paper until 10. Read for and outlined my environmental ethics paper until 11, wrote 4 pages of that paper until 12, went to lunch and leadership team bible study until 1, had class until 2:30, finished the 8 pages for my ethics page at 4, had prayer meeting until 4:30, edited my papers until 5, went to the Red&Black newspaper meeting until 6, ate dinner, had a dorm meeting until 7, went shopping for Monticello's coffee how that IV was sponsoring and set it up and cooked things until 9. Ran the coffee house until 11, cleaned up until 11:30. Went back to my dorm room and put my ethics presentation concerning my paper together. Did that until 12:30. Slept until 8, woke up, practiced my presentation. Turned in my English paper due at 9, gave my presentation and got a 99, then had my EVS class, then lunch, then another paper to write. And now I am here, finished, writing you. Hooray Friday! haha, i don't mean all that as some excuse for being unavailable...but just wanted to let all you guys know what i've been up to.

Beth

So Beth where are you?????

I Have Arrived

Yes, yes, I'm the last one. I really have no idea what to write in here. I had a cello lesson today and I finally got to book 4 in the Suzuki books. I'm now working on a Sonata in C Major by Jean-Baptiste Beval. I got 3rd chair in orchestra on saturday which is really good because then I don't have to play the boring cello part. Also I pretty much couldn't have gotten principle because the girl who did has
"senoirity" on me. I would like to point out however that she's in 7th grade.
In other news I still am not happy with my 10 page paper topic, which is Irish Immigration to the U.S. If any of you have have an idea it would be appreciated. Anyhow, I would like to point out that I haven't talked to Tim in almost 2 weeks...at all. I talked to Reba today for a total of 10 minutes and 51 seconds :).
Let's see...Campus Life small group is going to be at our house again, that's exciting. Oh and we played this really stupid game at church on wednesday. It was called something along the lines of Amazon Women....the worst name for a game ever. Anyhow all the girls had to try to pull the guys out of the crazy human knot that they were holding themselves in. Also we were supposed to be taking Elise home, except she disappeared. Abbey and I had to run all over the church a million times and we couldn't find her. Finally I stubbled across in, where else, the narthex. Honestly...
Just so you all know, Tiny's still alive, Samurai Joe is still alive and all of Tim's fish are still alive. Just thought you should be reassured. I suppose that I should go look up my Romeo and Juliet words now. (By the way I discovered today that my Romeo and Juliet book was Reba's once upon a time.) Anyway, now that I have told you all a million things I'm done.
Oh one more thing, for anyone who doesn't know. Mom and Dad bought season tickets to the Symphony for my birthday.

Beth.

The College Life

^ Wrigley field ^
So I've been here for 6 weeks or so now. Classes are going well, classes were light today, one ended early and once cancelled. I got a ticket to go see mewithoutyou and Coheed and Cambria this weekend, that should be alot of fun. I've gotten to a place where I never have to go buy tickets because my friends will just sell me theirs when they find out they are busy. I posted some some more pictures here for people to see http://photobucket.com/albums/y200/dougwardo/ . I have to write a 12 page paper this coming week.....I should probably start on it now, but it's doubtful that I will. I'll be home in about 3 weeks so be ready.

Alrighty Then

Hello,
Well now that Abbey has helped me figure this out I can say hello. So Tim how goes it, I havent talked to you in ages. Now I heard that you have attempted to call me but it doesnt count unless you leave a message and I do have a cell phone you know because I am never home. So I will continue to await your call as I am a caring and patient sister. Your other brother is quite communicative and I have talked to him a bunch of times and would like to talk to you too. I keep hearing about you but that also does not count because I am your sister not your grandmother. Glad to hear though that you are doing well and about intervarsity. Did you find a job yet? I am her working and I have to go to court today, always thrilling. I know at least one of my kids is going to get locked up today. Glad that we do not have any family members that are getting locked up. How did we all turn out so decent????? I am not usually into dumb jokes but I thought that this one is pretty funny, maybe because I am in a dumb sort of mood....I already e-mailed it to Doug.

A panda walks into a bar, sits down and orders a sandwich. He eats the sandwich, pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to go, the bartender shouts, 'Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn't pay for your sandwich!' The panda yells back at the bartender, 'Hey man, I'm a PANDA! Look it up!' The bartender opens his dictionary and sees the following definition for panda: 'A tree dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterized by distinct black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves'.So stay out of bars or you might get shot!

Hope you are enjoying your day. Is it beginning to feel like fall up there yet?? Every time I look at one of my magazines with fall stuff in it I get sad. I realized after coming here that fall is my favorite season. People think I'm funny because I decorate for fall here, but hey at least I can pretend that I dont live in a place that perpetually has the same nasty weather and I do mean nasty....unless its the dead of winter in which case the heat here is torrible and it might be cool enough to wear jeans and a tank top. Okay so I better go and do some real work now. Love you all! Reba

He's a Columnist AND a Turtle

Well, since my camera battery is dead... and have not yet gotten the charger for it, you don't get any pictures of me at school. Instead, I've got some new ones from SLT friends. Me at the turtle store:

Also, I'm writing a colum for the Red & Black Newspaper now. Since you all can't get the printed edition, you can have it on here(mum and dad i am bringing you the print editions if you want to wait). I've written 3 so far. Here's the first:

Elegies of a Quasi-Environmentalist:
Fishsticks and Bottom Trawling
I have never been intensely devoted to either side of any environmental argument. I have littered and I have worn the orange vest on the side of the road. I have knocked over trees just for fun and I have planted them. I even once killed a frog just to see what would happen, and then, a few days later, stopped my car so that the gimpy bird could hop slowly out of the way. While it seems that the majority of my life I may have been subject to a kind of bipolar environmentalist condition, I think I was really just completely ignorant. It seems, now that I am an intelligent college student, I can no longer claim ignorance nor do I want to. The problems concerning the environment are evident, important, and our responsibility; they are not a political, religious, or social agenda, nor are they merely for scientists, vegetarians and “tree-hugging hippies.”
So now, as I sit and begin to ponder environmentalism, my brain instinctively tells me go to the Greenpeace website (www.greenpeace.org). Seeing as I am nearly always a slave to my intellect, I fly to their propaganda-laced page and see what they have to offer my inquiring mind. At the top of the page, the motto stands out: “Greenpeace exists because this fragile Earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action.” This all sounds nice, peaceful and productive but further down the page I see a group of fishsticks in the shape of a hand flicking me off. The caption for this witty photograph is thus: “This is what bottom trawlers say to protecting ocean life. Let’s give them the (fish) finger.” While Greenpeace is talking about solutions, change and action, they are really being unproductively crass. Granted, bottom trawling may not be good for the environment, but somehow I doubt that they would stop trawling because of these flick-happy fish sticks. No one stops being a bad driver because they get flicked off by whomever they almost hit on the road; it usually just makes them agitated and worsens their driving even more.
This is the kind of problem that exists in much of today’s environmental conversation. While many people could care less about bottom trawling, those who do care seem to be addressing the problem in an entirely unhelpful manner. And so, I am striving to strike the balance, to create a written space where bottom trawlers are not given the finger by a box of frozen cardboard fish and where the actual topic of environmental protection is addressed. The only problem with this is that most people simply do not care. So, friends, I do not ask you to care, just to listen.
To address the topic of bottom trawling, you should know what it is. This is something that Greenpeace does not do. On the website, if you click on the angry fishsticks, it takes you to a page that mentions some bad consequences of bottom trawling and immediately asks you to sign some petition. Bottom trawling is in fact a rather terrible, but effective means of deep sea fishing where large vessels drop extremely heavy nets and literally scrape the oceans floor with them catching everything in their way including endangered species which were not part of the “intended catch” and ruining much of the coral reefs, marine mountains, and ocean habitats.
Essentially, the fishing method is comparable to using dynamite to kill ants: entirely effective, but unnecessarily destructive. Unlike Greenpeace’s attempts to put a stop to it, which are entirely ineffective and unnecessarily destructive. Currently, many scientists, environmentalists groups (including Greenpeace) are working towards a moratorium on all deep sea bottom trawling but have accomplished very little. Essentially, in order to really enact any change, Greenpeace and their constituents will have to convince the European Union other governmental systems with a logical, persuasive argument as to why bottom trawling is truly detrimental and why we should care. This is something that cannot be done with fishsticks, but with real, thoughtful conversation.

Well mom wanted me to post something... so here goes.

<---This is a lovely rose that we had in our yard the other day. It was fantttaasssttiiiccccoooo.

So, this weekend I'm going on a Campus Life Middle School retreat, which should be fun.

Not much really going on though, besides that. Saturday I had my Band Festival, I was playing quads and it was pretty fun.

Byeeeeeee

Abbey

Howdy...

Hello family, this is Abbey. I miss all of you that aren't living in the house at the moment, and I hope that you're having fun wherever you are.

This is the new family blog, and mom gave me permission to badger you if you don't post SOMETHING at LEAST once a week.

So get to it, and I hope you're doing well.