i suppose....

i've noticed that when most other people write blog posts, they don't go here, there, and everywhere in the post. not that i'm normal, but i suppose that if i kinda kept stuff in a logical order, then it would make it easier for all you readers. am i right? i probably am. so... in this blog, i'm gonna talk about a few things: brisingr, my swim meet on saturday, nerts after the meet, dogs, and group 1 crew's new cd. so there. i'm organized. (kinda)

so, for brisingr. i really liked it. however, i did not like the way that paolini made roran a darker character. as has been mentioned on one of my friend's blogs (http://phinwetalks.blogspot.com), roran went from someone who was fanatically obsessed with saving his girlfriend to little more than a hired mercenary. and i didn't like the way paolini made arya soften up towards eragon. it's kinda nice, but is it really necessary to have romance take such a prominent place in fantasy literature? don't get me wrong: i love fantasy; i love this book; and i enjoy romance. but...it seems to be in every single book! UGH. i'm committed to remaining single for a very long time (at least until i'm 20 or 21) and as far as i'm concerned, most of the male race is messed up in the head. (MOST not all) so it can get annoying to keep reading about romance romance romance. does that make any sense?

end of book review. on to weekend review!

i had a swim meet on saturday. it was a home meet (GO GATORS!) and there were about 200 swimmers there. warmups were at 11, and the meet actually started at noon. we were done at about 5, so that isn't bad... only five hours of sitting around in-between events. that averages out to approximately 20 events an hour... which isn't bad at ALL. i've been to meets that start at 10 in the morning and don't end until 6... with a smaller number of events. but anyway, for those of you who don't speak the lingo, a medley relay is composed of four legs... backstroke (on the back), breaststroke (think frog), butterfly (michael phelps' signature), and freestyle (front crawl), in that order. IM stands for individual medley, which is those same strokes, but a different order (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle). here's the events that i swam and the amount of time i dropped (or added :P) to my time (not counting relays):

4x50 yd medley relay (i swam the breaststroke leg)
200 yd IM -- dropped something like 3 or 4 seconds
50 yd freestyle -- dropped half a second
500 yd freestyle -- dropped 12 seconds (yay!)
200 yd breaststroke -- added 8 seconds (ugh)
4x50 yd freestyle relay

for those who have never been to a swim meet, they are long and cold and boring and chaotic. swimmers are all over the place, all of them freezing cold and eating junk food and not resting like they are supposed to be doing (i must admit that i don't do that much either). they are interesting, to say the least. no two are ever the same.

then right after the swim meet, i rushed home for the NERTS olympics. i didn't place, but it's a blast. lemme explain it this way... a swim meet is, for me, the equivalent of drinking about 3 or 4 energy drinks. NERTS is equivalent to about 2 of the same, plus a 2 liter of mountain dew (r). so i was rather hyper. (that's the understatement of the century.) but NERTS is a lot of fun. very high energy, lots of friends, cards, and food... what more do you need? ;)

so i crashed when i went to bed.. and i still wasn't done the next day! a friend of the family came over after church sunday. she's blind, and has a guide dog named adena. she's retiring adena on january 31, and we are adopting her after that. so she brought adena over to just spend a relaxing afternoon at our house, getting used to ur house, jesse and oliver (our cats), zinn (our dog), and all of us (i've got four younger sisters, from 13 to 4, and then my parents). so that was a slow afternoon.

so there's my crazy weekend from last week. now... group 1 crew. their new cd is absolutely AWESOME!! you know how some cds have your favorite tracks, and then the rest are bleh, and you don't really like them? well, on this cd, i do have my favorite tracks (keys to the kingdome, gimme that funk, tonight, our time, icontact, critical emergency, live out loud, living the life), but then the rest of the songs are also fantastic, and i love listening to them too. my only question is... when's the next cd? ;)

that's all for tonight!

-Enna