September Doings! (What even.)

. . . A bit late, as I warned it would be. But didn't I just do one of these? For the end of August? Wasn't that just a few weeks ago? Why am I already doing September's Doings post? Where did the time go? I think something or someone's stealing it, really. It should not be October already. However, since it is, I suppose I'd better go ahead and chronicle my Doings.

Writing!

• Um. I . . . almost fulfilled a writer stereotype and wrote in a coffeeshop at one point? But I had to read Acts and catch up on what previously happened before I could actually start writing, so . . . that didn't happen.
• And I wrote a paper on whether or not objective knowledge exists and is knowable. That was interesting.
• But, yeah, I didn't get more than a few hundred, maybe a thousand, words written on both my projects combined. And editing? Ha, no.

Reading!

• So I thought I read more than this this month . . . it felt like way more. Maybe that's just because I spent so long on some of the books.
• As you can probably see from the picture, I've mostly continued on my children's lit kick, because obviously that's what you do when you go to college. Obviously.
• The highlight of my purely-pleasure-reading this month was rereading George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, both of which were just as good as I remembered them. I also read The Golden Key and Other Stories, which was a mixed bag- The Light Princess and The Day Boy and the Night Girl were good; the other two stories I wasn't as impressed with. All the same- if you haven't read anything by George MacDonald, you need to fix that. Now. Really.
• Placing just after the George MacDonald books is The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. I read The Hero and the Crown, the prequel to this book, last summer and wasn't terribly impressed. The Blue Sword turned out to be much better; the setting is very unique, a mix of Middle Eastern and expansionist Britain (the expansionist Britain coming in as an outpost of said expansionist-Britain-like country), and I enjoyed the story once I got through the rather slow start.
• I also finished The Odyssey, which I read for Western Lit. I was quite sad to say goodbye to Odysseus and company after having spent four weeks with them- but oh well. Again, if you haven't read this, definitely do. (I recommend the Robert Fitzgerald translation; it's easy to read but preserves the beauty of the poetry.) Another excellent book I read for school is The Lost Letters of Pergamum, a fictional correspondence between Luke (the gospel author) and a Roman nobleman. If you enjoy historical fiction or want a fairly accurate-but-enjoyable look at the early Christian church, I'd definitely recommend it.
• And another few miscellaneous books: The Mysterious Benedict Society and Savvy both I read on the recommendation of my roommate. I enjoyed both, though I wasn't wowed by either. And the second and third book in the Fairyland series were enjoyable in their characteristic dark-and-weird way. I think there's a fourth book, but I haven't been able to find it yet. Oh well.
• Not pictured: The Hobbit and The Thief, both of which I reread at the end of the month. I think this is going to be the autumn of Greek-ish things, between rereading the Queen's Thief series and all the Greek/Rome-related reading I had to do for classes.
• Also not pictured: Plato's Republic. Which I did not enjoy. At all. BUT I FINISH IT THIS WEEK THANK GOD. And the other books I have to read for that particular class all look pretty interesting. So thank God for that as well.

Watching! 

•  My roommate and I managed four more episodes of Firefly this month. We would've watched more, except we were both rather too busy. I'm enjoying it more and more, particularly now that I understand what's going on. Mal and Kaylee are probably tied for my favorite character. And the last episode we watched showed some of Simon and River's backstory, which was cool. 
• Yeah. That's pretty much all the watching we did together. But we did decide that after we finish Firefly, we want to start the BBC Merlin, and the BBC Robin Hood sometime after that. We'll see how long it takes us to get around to those . . . Particularly since my roomie pointed out to me that Merlin is five seasons long, twenty episodes to a season. So, yeah. That could take us a while.

 Life!

• So. Yeah. College. My life basically revolves around going to class and doing homework. (And trying to get to bed at a reasonable time. That's important, whatever certain people say.) 
• As previously mentioned, I wrote my first-ever college paper (not counting the ones I did for dual-enrollment classes). I think I did ok, but given the topic and the professor, I have no idea.
• The professor, for the record, is one of my favorites- he teaches philosophy and he's very smart and kind of intimidating but also rather funny (in a sarcastic way) and good at explaining things so we can understand.
• I also had my first exam in New Testament Lit (which actually happened in October- just last Monday- but it's noteworthy and it happened before this post went up, so it counts). I spent several days leading up to it panicking over whether or not I'd get my notes/study guide typed up in time for me to actually study. Thankfully, I did, and the test went very well indeed. 
• Roughly two weekends ago, my Honors mentor and I met at a local coffeeshop, and then my roomie and I went to the local thrift store. Both things were fun, and my roomie and I are thinking that coffeeshop/bakery and thrift store trips are going to become a regular thing- not every Saturday, but at least once or twice a month, weather-permitting.
• Around the middle of the month, my dad was in the area on business and stopped in to see me, which was really nice. And then my whole family came up (over? down? I have no idea how to express the direction I am from home, mostly because I just know that I'm somewhere vaguely west) for Parents' Weekend, which was even better. We had a couple meals out/off-campus, one of which was with some friends from VA, went to see some other family in the area, and generally just hung out. (And did practical stuff as well- for example, my dad helped me set up a budget now that I have an idea what kind of expenses I'm dealing with, and we installed bedrisers and an amazingly awesome bookcase/hutch in my dorm.)
• That being said, Parents' Weekend was also Homecoming, which meant there were about three million people on campus and everything was slightly crazy. But it was all good.
• And I've been exercising regularly. It's a requirement for one of my classes, but it's still highly satisfying. Also highly necessary, because the dining hall has ice cream and a few other pretty yummy desserts and it is very hard to say no to ice cream. Particularly when there's flavors like Oregon Blackberry Cheesecake and Banana Cream Pie and Deep Sea Treasure (which is caramel-on-caramel-on-caramel).
• A final random thing: a few of my hall-mates and I took the New York Times' Dialect Quiz, and apparently I talk like I'm from Florida. What even. Everyone else got fairly accurate results, so I don't know what's wrong with me.

October Plans!

• Did I mention that my life revolves around classes and homework? Because, yeah, it does.
• In that respect, things coming up this month: a paper on "what is justice" in which I plan to reference The Princess Bride in the introduction, a midterm in Honors (which I need to start prepping for soon), an annotated outline of Ephesians (which I am not at all looking forward to doing), and, of course, the usual readings and such for all the classes.
• Also I'm doing strength training with the weight machines in the gym in addition to doing cardio stuff. I actually started that today, and got through nine different machines, feeling pretty good about how I was doing . . . and then I tried the chin-up machine and basically died. Oh well. Nine out of ten isn't bad.
• You know what else is happening this month? Fall break! I'm going to stay with my roommate, and it's going to be pretty fun. We're going to watch a lot of Firefly and have a craft day and I'm not sure what else but yeah. (And we'll also need to work on schoolwork, but that's beside the point.)
• Also this month: Halloween. Which usually I wouldn't do much of anything for . . . but my dorm does a Halloween event, and so does my major, which means I get to dress up TWICE. I may or may not have been planning out ideas since September. Yeah. I'm excited.
• Plus, Lady Dragon, Tela Du is releasing this month, which is super exciting. I got to beta-read LDTD, and let me tell you, it's amazing. There'll be an actual review going up during the blog tour, but for now . . . yeah. It's a major step up from WPFP, and I love the characters (for the most part) and the story and there's just so much YES.
• NaNoWriMo is also coming up, as you all probably know. I won't be doing a whole 50K novel . . . but I do hope to go rebel and take on a somewhat smaller editing goal, just to participate and get working again. We'll see; I still need to figure it out. (On that topic: anyone want to win a NaNoWriMo survival kit?)
• . . . Speaking of which, I should probably finish Fight Song. I swear I'm going to eventually. Maybe I can manage that over fall break as well?
• And, of course, there will be much more reading done. I'm going to finish my reread of the Queen's Thief series, reread The Lord of the Rings (slowly), and hopefully pick up some new reads as well. Hopefully. We'll see how that actually works out; maybe I'll cut back on reading and work on writing in that time instead. Whether or not I do that depends if I can write on an exercise bike, though . . . We'll see what happens.
• And I'm still searching for a church. It's slow going, especially since I have to find rides to any churches I want to visit. I've found two that I kind of like, but neither feels right, I don't think . . . maybe October will be the month I find the right one?
• So, yeah. This month will be pretty busy. Let's hope I survive.

 How was your September? How's your October going? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)