Okay, I’m not a huge fan of Hallowe’en. I usually try to participate, but it doesn’t really make the short list of my favorite holidays.

The main reason I don’t really like Hallowe’en is that I’m not very good at it. Some people are awesome at Hallowe’en. You’ve seen these people. They start brainstorming ideas for costumes in April, design them over the summer, buy supplies in early September and then spend two months perfecting the costume until the last week of October. I’m not one of those people. I’m not even one of those people who picks a costume a few weeks before Hallowe’en and orders one off the internet.

Nope, I’m one of the people running out to Target or the costume supply store in the mall on the Wednesday before Hallowe’en night… sometimes I’m pulling things out of my closet or gluing paper together two hours before I’m supposed to go out.

This weekend was no exception. I did have a lot of fun though.

Some of the frats on campus put together haunted houses to support their philanthropies. I hadn’t gone to any of them before, but this year I ended up at the Pi Kappa Phi haunted house, with proceeds going to support their national philanthropy Push America.

I walked in with two friends, not really expecting much, and walked out at the end thinking it was awesome! It was actually scary too. The whole set-up was very impressive. I think I’m a haunted house convert, I’ll definitely be going back next year.

The actual Hallowe’en nights (Friday and Saturday) were pretty typical for Halloween. I love seeing all the costume ideas while people are walking between parties in Collegetown. I saw some pretty good ones this year, haha. Favourite was probably, umm, the Moustache Faerie at my friend’s party. He was handing out moustaches all night. Great idea.

Don’t worry, I haven’t disappeared! Well, not really. I’ve been in prelim land for the past few weeks. I’ve pretty much had almost as many prelims, assignments, projects and presentations as there have been school days but I’m on the other side of that now. Thank goodness! I actually only have one more prelim this semester, so I’m sailing from now ’til December… kind of, I guess.

Well so much has happened in the last little while, so I’m going to write a little blurb about each.

Fall Break: I stayed at school during Fall Break for the first time ever. This was a little weird, because I’ve gone home the past two years (Fall Break falls – ha – on Canadian Thanksgiving) and campus gets pretty quiet. It’s kind of eerie actually. I had the house almost to myself though, which was cool, and I got a ton of work done. I did drive  out one day with some friends to a winery on Seneca Lake for lunch. It was a little cold, but the food was good and the leaves were changing so it was so pretty.

Homecoming: So much fun! My day started early, really early, with a 9:30am mixer with one of the fraternities on campus. Next they drove us to the Greek tailgate. It was my first time ever tailgating and I’m kind of addicted, I loved it. I love a barbeque anyway, but now I can’t wait for next year to do it again! The football game itself I’d rather not talk about. In fact, it was a little embarrasing. By the end of the first quarter everyone was standing up to yell at the field. the friend I was sitting next to, and I kind of didn’t want to watch so we stayed in our seats. This is what I saw for most of the game:

My view of the Homecoming football game.

The weekend after homecoming my sorority had our crush party. The idea behind a crush party is that you can invite your “crush” since invitations are supposed to be anonymous. Most people just bring their friends now though, and I’m not really sure how invitations could be anonymous (unless you had a friend deliver your invitation) because you need a paper inviation to get into the party. However, I do know someone who was invited to a crush party last year and still doesn’t know who invited him, so I guess it’s possible.

There’s a blog written by a Cornell student that I like to check once in awhile. He usually researches and writes about the history of some buildings on campus or in the Cornell area, but once in awhile he’ll have some news updates on what’s going on around here that we may not have heard about in the Sun. If you’re interested in checking it out it’s called: Ithacating in Cornell Heights. I recommend it; he’s got the background for most of the Greek houses on campus and recently wrote and interesting entry on Willard Strait.

Anyway, I’m not bringing this up because I like his blog… the other day he gave us good news to make the fast approaching winter a little less depressing. Apparently 2009-2010 is an El Nino year. I’m no meteorologist, but from what this blogger writes, that means the Northeast (including Ithaca) will probably have a warmer winter than average this year! Other El Nino years seem to have been an average of around 5 degrees warmer.

I’m not usually one to complain about the weather in Ithaca (seriously, I’m Canadian), but a possibly warmer winter is definitely not a bad thing. He does, however, have a disclaimer at the end of his post: 5 degrees warmer in January is still pretty cold in Ithaca. Very true.

OK, I’m done thinking about the Winter right now though. The leaves have been starting to change around here and it’s really really pretty but I’m not completely ready to let go of the beautiful summer weather.

I made it through to the weekend! I feel like I can do anything now after I survived this week. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, the due dates for multiple things just ended up on the same days on top of other stuff I had to accomplish before the week was over.

However, instead of going right home to nap yesterday (Friday) after classes were over, I walked down to the Schwartz to see the black box show “Love Song”. One of the cool things about the theatre department here, is that sudents can apply to put on shows or do explorations as part of the black box series at the Schwartz Centre. If your proposal is accepted, you get to use the resources at the Schwartz to do your project plus a mentor who gives you any guidance you need. From my experience, the people who apply usually direct themselves, but it’s also good for playwrights looking to do a staged reading or just trying something new with a classic play.

This Friday I went to see a play directed my friend Kelly called “Love Song”. Pretty much everyone  (if not everyone) involved in the show was a student, from the lighting designer, to the costume designer and the stage manager. I’d heard a lot about the show from Kelly and my friends who were in it, but I didn’t know what to expect. I definitely didn’t expect it to be completely hilarious! AND the audience was packed! It was a great show, and we were all so proud & happy that Kelly’s first big directing project had turned out so well.

The Love Song Poster

We went upstairs after the show to the green room (the room in the Schwartz where you could find theatre majors sleeping/working/hanging out probably anytime of the day) and had a little opening night party to congratulate everyone involved in the show. One of the Schwartz staff members also made a cake to look like the poster, it was pretty awesome (see the picture below).

The cake Terry made for the "Love Song" opening. I took this from her blog: http://sweetiecakesandpies.wordpress.com/

In other news: I signed a lease this week for housing next year! I’ll be living in Collegetown less than 5 minutes from the Schwartz. Very excited : ) Not thinking about the fact it’ll be my senior year…

Ok, the last week or so has been crazy. Prelims have started (which means I guess the semester has offically started too) on top of quizzes that shouldn’t really have been called quizzes and running around campus for everything else I have to do.

I did have my first project (scene) presentation for Directing I though and I think it went well! We had to direct a scene in the “region of silence” which means no talking or pantomime (harder than it sounds). I feel good about that class now though, so I’m exciting for our next project: directing a scene with a real script (that we didn’t write ourselves)!

In other news, I’ve been one of those annoying people promoting events on Ho Plaza (and Collegetown) for the past week and a bit becaause “The Servant of Two Masters” ran at the Schwartz Centre for the past two weekends, we need to get out there and make sure people know that stuff actually goes on in that building across from Collegetown Bagels, haha. (True story: one time our group was quartercarding in front of the Schwartz and someone said they didn’t know what/where the Schwartz Centre was. My friend had to point them to the building right behind them that they walk past everyday to get to class. Since we’re there everyday for theatre classes and rehearsal etc. we forget that not everyone practically lives there.)

I went to see the show yesterday though and loved it. I laughed so hard. Watch out for the next show of the season “Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music”  in a couple weeks and my friend’s blackbox project “Love Song” running this weekend!

Also… I’ve been out with my sisters promoting our annual Twister Tournament philanthropy event that was this afternoon! Ahh, this was my first Twister tournament, but it was definitely the most instense Twister I’ve ever seen. Actually, it was a bit more wrestling than Twister, but still, so much fun! At the end of the day it was a great success (even though we had to move it inside to RPCC because of rain) and combined with what the sisters have been raising on our own, we’re bringing over $2000 to a walk in Syracuse next weekend for our chapter’s national philanthropy Autism Speaks.

That’s it for now though, I should probably go get some work done. Sorry this was so long

I had a weird weekend. It was still a lot of fun, but different than normal.

Friday was a big day at my house. My sorority moved into a new house this year (which I get to live in because since I joined as a sophomore I’m one of the new members right now)  and we held a barbeque housewarming party for all of the sorority women on campus. It was a pretty big deal for us because this new house is a real milestone for our chapter, and sororities typically don’t move very often at Cornell.

We’d been planning it since the summer and had spent all week getting the house ready for more than a hundred girls to tour through it. In the end it was a big success! We were so excited to show off the beautiful house that we worked to hard to get and it was fun to play hostess to the girls from other chapters. It was awesome to see how supportive the other girls were too, and some chapters even brought housewarming gifts which were nice surprises that we really appreciated! We do have a ton of food leftover though, haha. We way overestimated how much people would eat, so our fridges and freezers are overflowing with hamburger and veggie burger patties. I know what I’ll be taking for lunch this week

Campus was pretty quiet this weekend though. Compared to a normal weekend at least, even in Collegetown. It was kind of strange. I mentioned in my last post that all fraternity social events until this Wednesday were cancelled because of Swine Flu. That decision seemed to be largely supported by Cornell students, or at least the people I talked to. We all realize now how serious this is, especially since we got an email from President Skorton on Friday with some bad news. I think people are going to be a bit more conscious about coming in contact with the flu and we understand it better that we did before. The numbers are above 500 at this point, so it’s on everyone’s minds.

I did have a great weekend though. Some of the girls in my house and I decided this would be a good weekend to do some sisterly bonding without going out, so we took full advantage of the large collection of board games in our basement and one girl’s copy of the first season of “Gray’s Anatomy”. I’m more rested tonight than I’ve been in awhile so I have big hopes for my productivity this week!

Sorry I’m bringing this up again, but the swine flu situation has changed a lot in the past few days so it’s a pretty big deal on campus.

There was an article in the Sun on Friday with the headline “More than 140 Cornell Students Report Flu-Like Illness”. The article yesterday reported 291 students diagnosed by Gannett with probable cases of H1N1. Now they’re encouraging people to stay home instead of going to Gannett if they think they have swine flu to help prevent its spreading. There has also been a Cornell student hospitalised because of complications.

We talked about this for about 20 minutes in one of my classes, and the professor (who normally insists we can’t miss the class) sent one of the girls home because she wasn’t feeling well.

Guess what else? ALL fraternity social events are cancelled this weekend! That means all parties and mixers. Guess we’ll be walking to Collegetown.

On a different note, did anyone see this below the suspension bridge on the North Campus side?

"I'm SRY" message below the suspension bridge. September '09.

That guy must have really messed up. Not bad enough to use all the letters in “sorry” though…

I walked by again today and saw that someone had changed the message to “SASSY!” with two sets of initials below it. I guess they made up.

Suspension bridge to North Campus

I don’t know if it’s just me or not, but everytime I have a cold it seems like it gets about 100 times worse as soon as I step into a classroom.

It works like this: finally give in and admit that my homework is being interrupted every 2 minutes from my own sneezing because I have a cold (not allergies). Go through half a box of Kleenex on Wednesday night before eventually falling asleep. The next morning, think the worst is over but still stuff my pockets with tissues just in case. Make the trek to class with no problems. Find a seat in my very full lecture, still thinking I’m in the clear. Spend the next 75 minutes trying to discretely wipe my nose and hold back sneezes while wishing class would end so I could blow my nose properly without disturbing the 150 person lecture (the whole time trying to ration the few tissues I have stuffed in my pockets).

The reason I bring this up is because I’m just getting over my annual back-to-school cold. Not only do we get new pens and notebooks for the new semester, but after living at home for the whole summer with only 3 other people, we get all kinds of new germs from our new housemates! (I have almost 40 of them this year and we’ve been passing this cold around for the past week.)

Or maybe I’m just allergic to homework. Possible.

But we’re only two weeks in and Cornell is already going swine flu crazy. I’ve gotten 5 emails since I’ve gotten back to campus reminding me what the H1N1 symptoms are and telling me to wash my hands. The Sun has had at least two articles as well to make sure we really get the point. (#1, #2.) It looks like we’re okay so far, but I’ll remember to stay at least 6 feet away from anyone who seems like he has the flu, like article #1 suggests. Hopefully I won’t get the swine and end up sleeping in Barton Hall to make sure my roomates don’t get it too.

You shouldn’t have to worry too much about me though, soap is my best friend.

I don’t know who came up with the idea to make the first week of classes only two days long, but I would really like to thank them. I’m pretty sure that after being home for 3 months there is no way I could jump into a full week of classes right away. Two days is just the right amount to transition back into the student life.

So we’re only halfway through the first full week of classes and my schedule is already craaazy. After today I’ve officially had all my classes at least once and I’m pretty psyched (haha, pun intended, I’m a psych major… get it?) for everything I’m taking this year. I’ll save you from the lowdown on each class right away, but just for reference here are the classes I’m signed up for this semester:

Psych 2230: Introduction to Biopsychology

Psych 2820: Community Outreach

Psych 3500: Statistics and Research Design

Theater 3800: Acting II

Theater 3980: Fundamentals of Directing I

I don’t have much to say about most of the classes yet, other than I definitely like them so far and am pretty excited about a couple. I do want to talk about Directing though. Umm, let me gush about this professor.

First of all, he is the Artistic Director of the Schwartz Center. That’s a pretty big deal. He also directs plays at the Schwartz, which I guess isn’t too surprising since he teaches the directing class. But here’s the really cool stuff… he’s been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a play he wrote in the 90’s called Miss. Evers’ Boys. That play was also made into a movie for HBO and starred Laurence Fishburne. That movie then won FIVE Emmys (it was nominated for 8)! I think that’s pretty awesome, but I’m not done… he also went to med school and still works as an emergency room physician! Uhh, wow?

That’s it for now though! Goodnight

So this isn’t a real entry, it’s actually the same as what I have in the “About Me” section, but I’m going to jump in with the real entries and I wanted you to know a little bit about who I am first.

My name is Kaitlyn and I’m a Junior Psychology and Theatre Arts double major in the College of Arts and Sciences. Well, I’m almost a double major. I’m still working on declaring the psychology part, but haven’t actually filled out the form yet to make it official. Whoops! That’s a minor detail though and it’s on my “To Do” list for this semester.

I came to Cornell all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia. That’s on the East Coast of Canada if you weren’t sure. I’ve definitely been asked if Nova Scotia was it’s own country before. It isn’t… although that would be cool. Even though Canada and the United States are neighbours, they can still be pretty different. I also get teased regularly by my friends about some words I use that apparently aren’t “American” enough (the meal after lunch is called supper, not dinner!) I’ve loved my last two years here though, and have had so many opportunities I might not have had closer to home but I do miss the smell of the ocean and really good seafood!

Of everyhing I do on campus, I’m probably most involved in the theatre community. I spend most of my free time at the Schwartz Centre in Collegetown (the home of Cornell’s “Department of Theatre Film and Dance“). I’m also the secretary for the Schwartz Centre Ambassadors, a group that promotes the events at the Schwartz and gets to talk to prospective students about the department. What’s great about the theatre department here is that the students can get involved in any part of putting on a show AND, the major is pretty small,  so I’m pretty sure I know the first and last name of all the theatre majors.

Finally, I’m a member of one of the  sororitities on campus. I joined last year as a sophomore and am living in our amazing new house this year with almost 40 other girls. I have TWO roommates, which is a bit of a change for me because I’ve never even had one roommate before, but they’re pretty awesome so I’m excited. Since I’m going to be in school for about a gazillion more years, this is probably the nicest house I’ll live in for awhile and I’m making the most of it!