Hello Imaginary Audience!  I was gone for a very long time...it seems like every time I've tried to update something has gotten in the way.  I'd like to be better about posting here in the future.

Not much going on right now...there is LSU basketball of course, but I can't get into that the way I got into football season.  All I know is that the men's team is ranked #8 and the women's team is ranked #1.  Aside from that, I'm clueless.

My mom, Beca, and John all came to visit me this past weekend -- actually they got here on Thursday.  That was lots of fun...

<b>THURSDAY</b>: They arrived.  But not before getting lost several times.  They picked me up at the dorm and we drove around, searching for a Popeyes in vain.  Popeyes is one of my favorite fast-food joints, but there isn't one on campus, and the chance to go never comes up -- sure, I could ask Brandon to drive me, but whenever he offers to take Ash and I out to dinner, he wants to go somewhere "nice" (and Popeyes, by Brandon-standards, is not nice).  So I saw the-appearance-of-Mom-and-the-suburban as a way to, well, eat at Popeyes for lunch!

The result was driving around Baton Rouge for a solid half-hour...and noooo Popeyes.

I maintain that we were just looking in the wrong place...this is BATON ROUGE for goodness sakes, there has to be a Popeyes SOMEWHERE.

John and Beca and Mom gave me a lot of grief for it, though.  Especially since John was sitting up in the front seat making his "i'm-very-hungry-pity-me-face."  And boy, did Mom fall for it.  "John is up here drooping," she chastised me, "and I think he'd be willing to eat anything, if you could just decide on some place OTHER than Popeyes.  Right John?"

John's response to that was to sigh and pout, "We didn't have breakfast, Ali."

"See!?!?!?"

Well exCUSE me.  John is ALWAYS hungry, for the record.  (I don't know where all the food goes -- he's very tall and very skinny.)  I refuse to take the blame for something that happens on a regular basis.

And of course Rebeca, never one to miss a chance to tell me how selfish I am, piped up from the back seat with, "It's not all about YOU, Ali."

Soooo we stopped at Raising Cane's.  Which is chicken.  Just not Popeyes.

Later that evening was dinner (yep, all we did on this trip was eat...) at Chimes.  Ashley came along.  It was pretty nice.  Good conversation and everything.  We talked about Joey's trip to Italy, and how Mom and Dad actually bought him a trenchcoat and a HAT to take on the trip.  Why?  God only knows.  My brother was thrilled to death.  What does a 16-year old need with a trenchcoat, anyway?  And a HAT!  I have this image running through my mind...one of those black and white movies...a dark alleyway behind a little Italian resturant (blinking sign out front says "Bertinelli's" or something) ...short guy in a hat and trenchcoat walking towards the camera...comes to a stop a few feet away...takes in his surroundings...motions for the camera to come closer...as if ready to convey to us one of the greatest, darkest secrets of his miserable, tortured, trenchcoated-life...

And says these words: "A shark on whisky is mighty frisky."

Yeah.  Anyway.

<b>FRIDAY</b>: I went to class, and had the Bio test (found out yesterday that I got a B on it) and went to go see an academic advisor in the Center for Freshman Year about some things, not least amoung them getting my intended major changed back to English (a temporary change, probably, but that's a boring subject I'd rather not discuss).

Mom and Beca and John came to pick me up for the day.  As we were walking back out into the parking lot, I tried to head toward the car.

Mom, however, apparently had other plans, as she and John and Beca continued walking along the sidewalk in the direction of the new West Campus Apartments.

All I could do was sigh and follow suit.  For about 15 minutes we stood looking at the not-quite-finished-yet apartments.  Mom harped a lot on the subject of whether or not there would be a wall or a security guard or something to protect the apartments from intruders.  She acted as if I'm supposed to know the answers to these questions, and since I, well, <i>don't</i>, we both got very snippy with one another.  Apparently we just have different priorities.  She wants to worry about what will happen if someone manages to break the lock on our front door.  I would rather worry about much more important things, like whether or not the university will be providing a t.v. for the living room.

See?  Different priorities.  The only reason we didn't get into an argument right then and there was probably because Mom backed off on the subject.

I should note here, that Cavazos Family Trips are not always the most fun things in the world.  Putting the five of us together in a car...doesn't really have a history of working out that well.  Sure, over-all, it's a fun experience.  (Well, I have fun anyway.)  But there are moments during these trips where everyone feels like smacking everyone else...moments where you can actually FEEL the tension.

-- hold on a second.

Very quick note in case I don't have time to update before I leave tomorrow.

And yes, I *am* leaving tomorrow -- as soon as Ash finishes her exam (sometime after noon) her brother is going to pick us both up and then they're going to drop me at the airport in time to leave for my 3:00 (or 3:30 or something, I don't know) flight out of Baton Rouge.

I'll just be glad to be over and done with finals.  Jesus, this has not been a fun week.  I think my stomach has shrunk because I've been missing meals, and my sleeping habits are just completely weird.  The Spanish exam was a nightmare; the Biology went better than I had expected, and I still have History (today at 3:00) and Library (tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning).

I haven't even started packing yet.  That's okay though, I look forward to packing stuff up to go on vacation, I think it's fun.

"DID YOU KNOW?": I packed for college the night/early morning before I left?  Yep.  I stayed up the entire night sorting and putting stuff away.

Anyway, so I still have to pack (tonight, apparently, since I'm sure I won't have time tomorrow...even if I do finish with the Library exam by 9:00 I've got to deal with both breakfast AND lunch, and any last minute errands around campus that I might not have a chance to get done today).  I wanted to make Ashley watch Gone With the Wind before we left for Christmas...maybe we'll have time tonight?  Awesome movie, I don't understand why she hasn't seen it before.

And I have to clean up the room.  I'm scared about this, because yesterday Ashley was poking around under the bed and she thinks she saw a roach.

Let's just say she handled it a LOT better than I did.

::defensive:: HEY, roaches SCARE ME.  (What if it was one of the flying kind??)  I took this chance to remind Ashley that there are cons to being on the bottom bunk: "You're safe up there, meanwhile I've got the ROACH MAFIA directly below my mattress!!!!!!"

Ashley: "It's not more than one roach --"

Me: "You don't know that."

Ashley: ::trying to be logical:: "If it were more than one roach we would have seen them around before now."

Me: ::dark voice:: "The Roach Mafia is sneakier than that.  They come out at night when we won't see them."

Sure, Ashley took all the business about a roach back when it became apparent that I wasn't going to help her clean up under the bed -- "Ali, it might not have been a roach, it could have been some other bug --"

Me: "WAS IT A SPIDER!?!?!?!?!?!" ::already planning to move into our neighbors rooms::

Ashley: "No, it definitely wasn't a spider."

Me: "Great, so then it was some other really big black looking bug?  Not a comfort, Ash, not a comfort at ALL."

So I stayed up on my bed and panicked for the both of us.  Last night I waited for the roach-or-whatever-it was to make an appearence to no avail.  Stupid, sneaky little insect -- or, as Ewan McGregor once put it, "Nippy little bastards one and all."  Amen, Ewan, amen.

I've been downloading Christmas songs in the effort to make the perfect Christmas CD.  I never realized it before, but I love "O Holy Night" -- it's such a beautiful song.  I'm also putting "Winterlight" by Sarah Brightman on the CD...it's not a Christmas song, but "winter" is in the title, and it's so beautiful -- it's from the movie The Secret Garden...the one that came out, like, in the early 90s.

In other news, General Hospital is starting to rock more than usual.  For the unaware, that's the soap Ash's gotten me hooked on.  Yesterday we got to watch Jax (::hates Jax::) gleefully go through his bail hearing (he "confessed" to the murder of Alcazar in order to "save" Brenda, gag me with a SPOON), the D.A., Scotty get in trouble for keeping evidence from the court that would have incriminated Jax (Scotty doesn't really want to put Jax in jail; he'd rather put SONNY in jail...because he hates Sonny) -- oh, and then there was Luke dressing up like Santa and letting strangers loot his bar, not to mention we got to see more of Lucky yelling at people ("Hey put that back!  Don't you know that's stealing??  Gimmie that!!" ::wrestles object away from a looter::) -- which is always fun.  Even better was the Sonny/Brenda moment at the end.  I can't wait until today's episode...just a few hours away.

Okay, well, I'm going to have breakfast.  ::waves::

~~~Ali~~~

Hello Imaginary Audience!!!!!!

Wow, it has been a very long time since I updated this thing.  According to the helpful reminder from Xanga (which is ever-present on the top of my update page) it has been 44 days since I joined the program, and they feel it's time to support them by going Premium.  I wish I could do that, but since I have no income of my own, I can't.  We'll wait until I get published by a major magazine.  I do have something ready, but becuase of the nature of the story, I can't really get into what it's about.  And since it will be sent to some obscure magazine none of you will ever read (and probably published under a pen name too) -- well, let's just say no one will ever even draw the connection to me.  Rest assured I will be showing you the pay-check though (and don't worry, there WILL be a pay-check).

So, what should we talk about...?

How about we talk about missing class?

Isn't it interesting the way some people miss class sometimes?  It's not that they "forget" to go, per say, they just sort of sleep through the alarm.  It's fascinating, really.  Truly.

::beat::

You know what, on second thought, let's find another, less-dangerous topic.

Ashley and Brandon spent a ton of time months ago lecturing me about Baton Rouge winter weather.  I refused to believe them when they said that it was not uncommon to have 70 degree weather in December.

Boy, what a slap in the face this past week has been.  I mean, I wear my cute black jacket in protest, but my heart is just not in it.  It was colder in Laredo than it is here, and that is really saying something.

Okay, I'm going to post this now and then I'm going to go mess with trying to post something in the reviews section.  I'll post again on here when I've got something up.

~~~Ali~~~

Hello, Imainary Audience (I should really get a trademark on that phrase, shouldn't I?).

Not much is going on right now.  I went to Library on Thursday and Jordan informed me that one of his favorite bands (named Tool or something) played in Laredo recently.  I laughed, "Where in Laredo?  Nothing ever goes to Laredo."

And he was like, "You guys don't have an arena or something?"

Oh.  The Almighty Arena...the one I would always pass on my way to pick up Joey from Casa Blanca.  That Arena.  I had no idea it was finished.  Apparently Jordan had been reading a review of the concert, and it said it had taken place in Laredo's "Laredo Arena."  (I laughed at that...I would have thought they could have come up with an original name.  Like the "Tumbleweed Arena", or the "Arena That Cost a Lot of Money that the People of Laredo are Never Going To See Again" or something...I dunno, I'm not very funny tonight...so imagine another, funnier name, and that's the name I think they should have picked.)  He said that one of the Tool people said that afterward they went to Mexico, I guess to party.  Jordan thought that was cool, that Mexico was so close to Laredo.

A lot of people are usually taken by surprise when I say that Mexico and Laredo are so close.  The also seem to get a kick out of the fact that I use the term "across the river" -- for example, I'll say, "My best friend Ale lives across the river, so I didn't see her very often outside of school" or I'll make a reference to the "across the river kids" from my class or I'll say, "Yeah, the last time I went out to eat across the river was --"  I say "across the river" without thinking, and that usually gets some giggles from the people I'm talking to (except if I'm talking to a guy, because guys don't giggle...guys NEVER GIGGLE).

I'm so excited, I'm going to go have breakfast tomorrow at McDonald's!!!  I love having breakfast there, I haven't been since last week.  I worship that biscuit thing, that bacon/egg business.  I don't even want to think about what might be wrong with any bacon or egg cooked at McDonald's, that's how good I think it is.

I'm also excited because Ashley, Raelee, Brandon and I are going to go to Chimes the night before we all leave for Thanksgiving.  Chimes is one of my favorite resturants, now, but it's kinda pricey (or at least more expensive than eating fast food) so we hardly ever go (the last time I went was weeks ago with Brandon).  So I've declared that that's going to be our treat before Thanksgiving holiday, and everyone seems to be going along with it.  Yay!

As for my classes, things are going all right.  The good this week has been Spanish class: I got two projects back -- I got a 96 on the composition Dad helped me with (on the phone at 6:30 in the morning!) and a 90 on the outside reading assignment which I did all on my lonesome.

The bad was English: I got a B on a paper we had to write in class.  Sort of what I was expecting...I was hoping for an A, of course, but even though I knew it was entertaining (and my teacher wrote that, as she'd expected, my paper wasn't boring!) but I'd run out of time to include some other examples (we were analyzing an magazine ad).  I might post it later in the Reviews section, if anyone is interested in reading it, not because I think it's the best thing I've ever written, but because I like some of the individual pieces of it, and maybe someone else would enjoy reading it.

For the Alabama game, I'm definitely going to be babysitting Carly, but probably not Cade (he'll probably be asleep at the time the game will be going on, so it'll be easier for his mom to get someone to watch him).  Remember to watch on ESPN at 8:00, Saturday night.  It'll be good, I promise.

~~~Ali~~~

Hm.  Well, today is turning out to be an all right day so far...I have to go to library later, but I don't mind that, because the guy I sit next to (Jordan) is very nice, and Thanksgiving is steadily approaching, hooray!  I can't wait to get away from campus.  But even before that we have two more home games -- Alabama, which is going to be on ESPN (at 8:00 at night) ...I'm not going to that one because I've taken a babysitting job for Ashley's sister-in-law...I'm going to babysit little Cade, who is just one year old, and I might also babysit his older sister Carly (who is four) if they can't get her a ticket to the game.  This babysitting is going to happen in the dormroom, by the way, where I have easy access to all kinds of good babysitting stuff...stuff that I would list, except that would be boring.

The Ole Miss game, last home game, has been picked up by ESPN2 so it'll show at either 6:45 or 8:00.  I'll know later.  That's going to be a big game also.

I can't believe that the end of the semester is almost here.  I'm trying to sign up for classes...so far I've snagged Political Science at 9:30 three mornings a week.  I have to go see someone about signing up for Honors English, and to find out what my second semester of History will be (becuase I can't figure it out from the courses book).  I think I'm also going to take Biology here, in the event that I can't come up with enough hours.  I wanted Russian 1001, entry-level for people who don't know Russian at all, but from what I can tell they only offer Intermediate Russian the second semester.

Last night I had a horrible migraine headache probably brought on from ::blanch:: missing meals.  So I suppose I brought it on myself.  That was actually a more comforting thought than you'd think it would be.  Of course, it was one of the weirder migraines (lately they've all seemed a little weird in some way) -- it started out like a hunger headache, mostly on both sides of my head, and I was like, "Oh, okay, I'll eat and it will be fine."  So I went with Ashley and Raelee to David and Crystal's house, to eat dinner there.  We had a kind of pizza/chicken/cheese/enchilada deal, which was pretty good, and a REALLY good salad -- I think Crystal called it a Fiesta Salad...topped with shredded cheese and with crunched up Fritos mixed in it.  Really good.  Oh, and I had a coke to drink.  But, maybe I didn't eat enough, because the headache just got worse.  By the time I got back to the dorm room, I was starting to feel kind of sick to my stomach.  I slept from about 7:00 to 8:00, and then from about 9:00 to 11:00.  That second time I woke up, I felt God awful.  I was sure it was a migraine, but I was too scared to take Advil because I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken some.  Plus, I felt like if I was to move, I'd throw up the one meal I'd actually had all day (and I did the throwing up thing, people, a few weeks ago when I had that stomach virus...I was not happy at the prospect of an encore performance).  Ashley was still awake, working on an essay or something, but I couldn't even open my mouth to talk to her because I just felt so bad.  I'd been using my Discman to listen to music, because that usually helped me get to sleep...it gave me something to concentrate on.  So this time, I put on my Slayers Mix (those of you who know what that is are probably, "Oh God, Ali, how could that racket possibly help you sleep!?!") -- and that helped, which actually surprised me a little.  I was almost asleep, when the Discman cut off.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you buy a CHEAP Discman, there's a reason it's cheap.  There is ALWAYS.  A.  REASON.

This is about the tenth set of batteries I've gone through since I've been at college.  And I don't use it THAT much.  I use it on road trips, and I use it occasionally in the dorm room.  This is just ridiculous.  It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that the stupid thing take four batteries at once.

I just about cried then, because the Discman was the only thing helping me get to sleep, and without the music I was basically looking ahead to, oh, three or four hours awake with nothing but the pain and the DAMN CONAN O'BRIAN SHOW GOING ON ON THE TELEVISION SET.

At least I think it was the Conan O'Brian show.

And that's not even the point.

I wish I could remember how I got to sleep, because that could have actually turned out to be helpful sometime in the future.  I remember asking God to please let me get to sleep, and I would be really, really thankful.  Maybe that's it.

So I woke up infinitely happy, and even though I didn't have time to go to McDonald's for breakfast, I'm planning to go to Mr. Gatti's for lunch.  Really cool.

My "stalker" called a little while ago.  I made Ashley answer the phone -- she said "Hello," and all she heard was breathing on the other end.  She said "Hello" again.  More breathing.  That's about the time she hung up and threw the phone at me, with the instructions, "Ali, you HAVE to deal with that."  Yeah, well, I would, but he's such a nice guy.  What am I supposed to do, tell him to stop calling?

::the imaginary audience starts throwing stuff at Ali, and someone from the back yells, "Of course that's what you have to do, stupid!!!"::

Fine, whatever.  SIGH.  It's so hard, constantly pandering to the Imaginary Audience.

I guess that's really all that's going on here.  Now I need to go get ready for lunch.  Cheers :)

~~~Ali~~~