Happy Easter!

So... I'm just going to pretend like I haven't completely neglected this blog. I'm officially now un-incognito (cognito?) and very glad to be back. Instead of catching you up on all of the many things that have happened since I last posted (seriously, I probably couldn't count all of them), I think I'll just give you some idea of my life currently.

This quarter, my free time consists of Sunday afternoon, Friday evening, and the rare chunk of time on Mondays from 3ish - 5. I am currently using the first of those to write this and am blissfully ignoring all of the reading that I have to do tonight. The rest of my time is spent on homework, house stuff, and head TA duties. (I was originally going to sneak in the fact that I'm one of the CSE 142 head TAs this quarter, but I couldn't mess with that 'h' alliteration). My course load isn't too crazy, but all of my classes have tons of little components that are keeping me busy. Mixing that with TAing means that I am literally at school doing something from 9 - 7 four days a week. Hopefully, this will all be helpful for later on and I'm not going slightly insane for nothing.

Apparently the other I've been filling my time with lately is self improvement. My housemate, Johannah, and I seem to have semi-daily discussions over our food and I have been very grateful for the insights she has given me. I feel like since moving into my current residence that I have learned a lot about myself, both things I like and things I wasn't aware that I needed to work on. Hopefully when you see me next I will be a much better person because of living here.

One of the other new things that I've taken on recently is getting active again. The weak spring sun is trying to appear daily in Seattle and I've taken advantage of that to start finding time to be athletic. Also, I have a class that is legitimately 2 miles from my house so I've taken the initiative and bought a bike. Soon after that purchase I discovered that I do not have any of the muscles required for biking. Did you know that there are muscles on the outsides of your quads? Apparently that is a thing my body was not informed of, and riding a bike for even a short period of time leaves my legs twitching and sad faced. The other active thing I've started is I went rock climbing for my first time in forever last Friday. I remember climbing once at Western a long time ago and being pretty awful, but somehow one of the other TAs convinced me that rock climbing is a thing that I should be doing. Surprisingly, it was tons of fun and I wasn't as terrible as I thought I would be. I climbed to the very top of one of the really tall walls at the IMA and got to be lowered down on a rope and harness. Even though the day after this adventure my triceps were constantly shouting at me, I can definitely see myself purchasing a pair of rock climbing shoes of my own.

The only problem with finding new things to fall in love with is that other things get left behind. Rock climbing will probably steal my Friday afternoon free time slot, which means I have even less time to explore the things I want to be doing. Included in that is music. I found that last quarter I would pick up a guitar quite frequently, but now I haven't really touched any musical instruments all quarter. I want to change that, but I'm not sure if I have the time to and any musical pursuits will probably get pushed back until summer. My housemate, Richie, wants me to record, and it would be cool because he is really good at recording and producing music, but I honestly can't seem to find even two hours to give him. And this is only the first two weeks of the quarter; it only gets busier from here.

The other thing that has been suffering because of my full schedule is photography. Recently, I discovered the ability to check out expensive cameras from UW and have been doing so ever since. Even though they are only available for 7 day rental, I keep checking out nice cameras and lenses and experimenting with taking pictures. It has been really fun to document my day to day life with pictures and I think I'm finally getting used to being the awkward girl walking around with a camera all the time. Maybe at some point in the future that is another purchase I could see myself making. Actually, I have also been sharing the record of my life with the internet. If you weren't aware of An's blog, you really need to check that out. An is a fantastic photographer (she works for the Daily!) and she posts amazing pictures most days of the week. After checking her stuff out for a while, I decided that I wanted to try this daunting task of photographing my days as well. So I have been updating this on a semi-regular basis. I don't really write anything too interesting, but I have enjoyed collecting photographs of my day to day life. Hopefully I will be able to keep it up and be able to look back on my college life through pictures. Plus, hopefully taking lots of pictures will force me to become a much better photographer. By the way, if you are at all inclined to take pictures, I would love it if you posted them somewhere I could see them. I would really like to see your life as well as hear about it.

I miss you so much already and I can't believe we will be parted until Christmas. Even though I am super proud of you for landing your awesome co-op, I will be counting down the days until we can play Trivial Pursuit together again. Also, I will keep thinking about the amazing trip we will eventually take to Europe or some other place. I will probably keep planning that in my free time to keep me sane from not having my daily dose of Lola. I wish that this were more like a Skype conversation or phone call and that I could legitimately ask you how your day is going, but regardless, I hope life is going well for you and that I get to hear how you are soon.

Love you!
Riley