It's been a busy summer so far, but comps are finally over. I managed to pass, and for that I am very relieved. However, I know know just how high my committee's expectations are of me, and I have a lot of work to do before our next big meeting later this year.
Progress is being made on wedding planning, got most of the big stuff figured out, now just gotta work on the details.
I'm really looking forward to my summer vacation this weekend. Can't wait to have a nice long weekend where I can relax and not have comps worries in the back of my head.
So there's the update, more in the future.

Busy time, ready, set, go!
This summer is going to be very busy, but it should be at least partially fun. I get to plan my wedding (which will be the fun part) and go to other people's weddings (also very fun) and I have comps (not fun). Combine all these and shake well and you have my summer. Thankfully, I should have enough time to plan for the wedding that I won't have to do too much when I'm head deep into comps and grant writing. To that I owe Beeks, my fiance, a lot. I also hope to do at least some visiting of friends as well.
I hope everyone is having a great Spring so far and the warm weather will hopefully be here soon.

My previous laptop is pretty much dead. I'm hopeful, but not sure that I will be able to get anything off the hard drive, so I've lost a number of things, including some of my artwork. The good news is, I now have a new laptop, which is nice. And I didn't lose anything super important like work or important school stuff.

On a different note, I can't believe summer's almost over already. I'm curious to see how my schedule unfolds for classes and TAing this fall. Until then...

Danielle

Ah! It's my birthday already. Where has half the summer gone? Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy B-day.

Ok, I have to vent on this somewhere, so if you really liked the movie, you may not want to read this. There may also be spoilers, so be forewarned.

I think it may be time to get some new writers on staff for the Naruto movies.This last one, to me, seems to be a remake of the first. For example:
The main character's a whiny, spoiled girl.
They send out team 7, though in this movie, Sasuke's replaced by Lee, and Kakashi's replaced by Neiji and they're time skip.
They have to protect the annoying main character, who suddenly learns to like Naruto about 2/3s into the movie.
They fight these awesome ninja (whose designs are really neat in the 1st and 4th movie, but I don't think they get enough credit), there's 3 in the first and 4 in the 4th movie.
The "evil" ninja work for a leader (a guy who doesn't seem to do anything until the very end of the movie).
They get killed by team 7.
Naruto and main female character, who by this time I never want to hear her voice again, go find leader of bad guys.
Female main character does something stupid.
Naruto fights leader of bad guys.
Naruto and main characer team up to make some stupid new Rasengan and kill leader of bad guys.

The problem I have with the 4th movie is the ending. All this work for one brief fight scene with the awesome orochi-like evil villain, a sailor moon-type transformation and yet another Rasengan. The other cool shippuuden characters get about 10 seconds of screen time all together, which bothered me. And Neiji could have done a lot more.
On the good side, there were funny moments, Lee got drunk (which rocks!) and Sakura almost really did stuff. That's really about it.

There, now we can go watch the 2nd movie, which isn't very good either, but it's still my favorite.