Finally finals

The day has arrived, ladies and gentlemen; today I shall take the first final of my college career.  Despite the fact that finals in general have been going on all week, my first hasn't been until today.  Which exam is this, you ask?  Logic.  My journey with Logic has definitely been an easy one.  I've found it to be a difficult subject, and I required quite a bit of tutoring.  It is, however, rather unfortunate that I'm just now finding it to be not that difficult towards the end of the class when it doesn't matter so much anymore.  But still.  My professor, Dr. Burton, has been amazing.  Honestly, with the combination of professors I've had this semester, there are only two that I've really liked; there's never really been any sort of in-between.  I either really liked them or they scared the living daylights out of me.  If I hadn't been lucky enough to have these two professors, my first semester would probably have been much more brutal than it was, and I probably wouldn't be returning after my visit to Pikeville this month.

So!  What has Ashlee been up to in the past fifteen days?  Last weekend, as a way to de-stress before finals, the lovely roomies and I headed to St. Louis on a rather impromptu trip for a concert.  The band?  Ludo!  They're a somewhat local band that's gotten huge, and they're really, really awesome.  Think of their genre as "nerd rock."  It took place at the Pageant in St. Louis, in an area that would have been really cool to explore if we'd had time.  We spent the majority of the day at the St. Louis Galleria, the best part of which was spent in the newly-opened Disney Store, where I finally got the plushy of Nala from The Lion King, which has been my cute childhood dream.  So I finally got my Nala!  YAY!  Lauren got a plushy of Jack Skellington dressed as Santa Claus from The Nightmare Before Christmas.  She is quite charmed by his wide smile, which is rare on Nightmare merch.  The kicker?  They were only ten dollars each.  At the Disney Store, this is an INSANE price.  Especially for medium-sized stuffed animals.  I literally gaped at the cashier for a moment; I hadn't realized they were on sale.  But yay!

Cute, isn't she?

Then we went to Hot Topic, which is an interesting tale.  Kat and I like Megadeth, right?  Right.  Their new album, Th1rt3en, was released on November 1st, right?  Right.  So obviously there was a new shirt available at Hot Topic.  (Just one shirt, which is sad.  Metallica had two, which is a surprisingly small number, and Avenged Sevenfold had four.  Sigh.)  Anyway.  We wanted the shirts.  They're male-sized.  Buy one get one half-off.  Kat needs a small and I can get by with either a small or a medium.  Our plan was for us to buy them together so I can get the half-priced one as a way to pay me back for helping her and Lauren buy a pizza way back.  The problem?  They had a medium-sized, a large, and an XL.  No small.  There's no way Kat can get by with a medium.  So, because we're in St. Louis, we decide to hop across town to the other mall, where there's another Hot Topic (as well as a Barnes & Noble, which was another eventual destination of ours).  The problem here?  They had a small and a large; no medium.  SIGH.  So, being the Samaritan that I am, I agreed to get the large despite the fact that I was practically drowning in it?  I wanted the shirt that badly.  And a Megadeth shirt for $10 isn't really something you can pass up.  So, with the plan to shrink it in the wash eventually, we bought it.  And I got my shirt!  YAY!  It really is awesome.  I really love it since it actually has Dave Mustaine on it, unlike the other shirt I have.  WOO!

Our tradition of taking pictures of us in our Megadeth shirts in front of Kat's staircase continues.

After that, we spent a great deal of time in Barnes & Noble.  I didn't get anything, although I was drooling over some "teach yourself Italian" stuff in the foreign language section.  I've come to the conclusion that I can't learn a new language in a classroom setting; the only reason French is working is because I have prior knowledge of it.  I think I have to do the language at my own pace.  Because Russian was harder, it would have been better for me to go slower, while the class was very fast.  So I'd still like to teach myself another language.  (At Hasting's yesterday I found a kit to teach yourself Romanian.  It's the first Romanian language thing I've ever seen.  I wanted it.  Badly.)

Finally, after we'd sufficiently worn ourselves out at the mall, Kat's mom dropped us off at the Pageant where we waited in line with the other minors in the freezing cold.  (We're not minors, technically, but we're still under twenty-one.  Sigh.  ALMOST THERE.)  Once we got in, we found that we would be unable to find seats, so we were forced to join the "pit of doom" as we call it.  We were pressed up against people we didn't know, shunted this way and that, forced behind tall people, and all that fun stuff.  The first opening act, Option//Control, was awesome.  The three of us really want their EP.  The second, Treaty of Paris, was less cool.  It was just boring, and all of their songs blended together and sounded the same.  It was just noise.  Finally, after about two hours of standing, Ludo came on!  They were amazing.  The concert was just plain fun.  It involved dance moves in which they had us hip-thrust, not caring who we're practically humping.  At one point, they had everyone in the mosh pit sit down.  This is a very difficult thing, mind you.  Lauren ended up on my lap while I'm kneeling, with all my weight on my ankles.  The band went to the bar right behind us and led everyone in singing Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Jingle Bells, Silent Night, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.  It was quite hilarious and fun.  After the show, we had a chance to wait in a long line for expensive merch and to actually meet Ludo, but we were exhausted and just done, so we left.

Fun trip, I say!

And now we're back at Truman, and my first exam is in about two hours.  Am I nervous?  Somewhat.  I've pretty much accepted that, after this, there's nothing I can do.  I've done my best, and we'll just have to see what comes of it.  My French exam is tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning (YIKES!), and my WACT exam is due today at some point.  I'll be busy pretty much all day, but yesterday was fun, filled with Christmas shopping and just chillin' with my bestest friends.

This weekend Kat and I will be going back to St. Louis for another concert; this time it's the Trans-Siberian Orchestra!  Lauren's not really interested in them, so she'll be spending the weekend with her dad in Hannibal.  But it shall be fun!  Yay!  I'm so ready for this semester to be over.  Christmas break shall be spent with Lauren and her family, and then I shall spend a week in Pikeville with my family before coming back with a week to spare before the second semester begins.  Wee!  Optimism is key.

Sail on, little toaster.  Sail on.