My bright bright future

Hello y’all!

Don’t even talk to me about my current (inconsistent) publishing schedule, I don’t know either. 

But I’ll start this off with a celebration of me making it through my first week of second semester. Which so far, seems to be weirdly easy? Not complaining exactly, but 18 credit hours (the maximum you can take without approval here) is yielding about an hour-and-a-half of homework a day, which means I get a full 6 hours of banging my head against the wall time! Yippie!!! 

Other than that my life so far has been pretty ok, my current issue plaguing my happiness and well being is that I have been forced to put my fish sweater aside because of the many talents I have, knitting math is not one of them. To make matters worse, I ordered the wrong color of yarn (warm gray vs, cool gray) so I have to wait till Monday to continue. This did however force me to re-startup my shawl that I put in a back corner for like 3 months. I unfortunately injured my wrist sledding a few weeks ago (make sure that you don't get caught on the string that will inevitably get tucked under the sled), so my knitting has slowed in favor of being able to, you know, write, and take notes. 

We also got out shower fixed, because yes dear reader, I have in fact been taking lukewarm showers up until this point. Rejoice the hot water!

As for other things, I have skipped around the city slightly, mostly to uptown, home of delicious Bahn mi and cash-only bakeries. I really like that neighborhood, and it's a nice distance from Loyola. 

I will say though, I seem to have inherited my grandmother's ability to draw in people that wanna talk to me? Like, at first I thought it was an everyone thing, but I swear it hits 4 PM and people change. I got yelled at? Strongly talked to? In three different languages in my four-block walk with a friend in a 10-minute span. Also my red-line car smelled more like piss than average (which if you've ever lived in Chicago for any amount of time know what I’m talking about when I say the smell threshold), so combined that put a bit of a damper on my day yesterday. 

The plus of yesterday was that it was slightly warmer than it has been. Because yes, it really was as cold as the news was saying it was. Also, more recently the ice here has been crazy, and because Loyola doesn't salt (which is pretty on-brand for this institution), people were slipping and sliding like crazy. Even in my Salomons I felt like I was walking like a penguin, especially when going downhill. 

Well, that's enough about the weather. An upcoming project I have in my music class, in which I have to create an original song, on what is essentially Apple's garage band on steroids. I’ve already promised that Bridget gets to hear it first but I'll release it to y’all if I feel like it. In complete transparency, it's currently 6 seconds of swimming pool audio, and then a beat drops into acoustic guitar? Grammy nomination here I come. Maybe I’ll drop out of Loyola (like so many people I know are doing) and pursue a career as an EDM DJ. I'm sure there is a huge market for raves that end before 9PM. 

Well, that's pretty much it from me. I have like, zero pictures because last semester I smashed one of my phone cameras and the small shards of glass started to make the main camera foggy. I probs won't get it fixed till break though. I originally broke it on the corner of the stair railing. These hips don't lie, and also provide ample opportunity for anything in my front pockets to be sacrificed to whatever object I inevitably bump into. 

Live, Laugh, Loyola.

• Gretchen 

Me, tired and obviously not wanting to be outside

Megan and our "Hot Priests" calendar (thanks Elena)