Current Events

On Sunday, Mom, my friendliest friend Eliza, and I traveled to Orange City, Iowa to visit Northwestern College. The trip up there was slow going, due to the winter weather, but traveling with them was most definitely more fun than any old travel. There was great music, stops at family member's houses along the way, and lots of good chatting and laughing! Eliza and I stayed overnight with college students in (different) dorm rooms, and that was a blast! We went to Praise and Worship Sunday night in the chapel (student led & beautiful service) and after that we ventured over to The Hub, a coffee house type thing on campus to hang out with other college kids and have a bite to eat. After this, my roommate host took our posse back to the dorms. It was snowing quite a lot. It was the very fluffy type of snow, but it accumulates fast! In other words, snow in my hair, snow on my luggage, snow in my shoes, and snow!
******(see below)
After we got inside a got ready for bed, and my hosts finished some homework and said I was welcome to watch a movie. I chose The Princess Bride, but Walk the Line was a close second. I fell asleep on the futon while watching. The next morning, I went to breakfast at 7:50 and then began the normal day activities, which included chapel at 10:00. They have a 1/2 hour chapel every day except Tuesdays, which is an hour long, and Thursday when they don't have chapel, but have no classes during that hour. Overall, I continued to be impressed with Northwestern. I really loved it and so did my parents.

******At this point when I was typing this post on Tuesday, my mom told me that if I wanted grilled cheese to go with the Tomato soup she made, I'd have to make it myself. I was busy typing this before show choir, so I finally rushed over and grabbed the last (and crappiest non teflon) pan out of the pantry. Proceeding to the stove, I noticed that there were crumbs on the burner I was going to use. (Just to clear things up: I'm not picky, 2 burners aren't used because of a crack and another had some dirty dishes on it. As I said, I was in a hurry.) Anyway, since we have a smooth top stove and I semi-anal, I wanted to brush the (what I thought were) crumbs off. Not thinking, I promptly placed (very deliberately, I might add) on to the burner. . . and screamed. I did not, in my haste for nourishment, pause to think that the only burner that was open for me was the same single burner that was open for my mom when she just made soup. SEARING PAIN! No kidding, the worst pain I have probably felt thus far in my life. I was screaming, jumping around trying to get to the sink, and crying. At this point, Kelli and mom start running around wondering what in the world happened. I was running my hand under the cold water, and someone got me a bucket of ice water. I kept my hand in that for a good 15 minutes, and as if burning myself wasn't bad enough, sticking my hand in a bucket of ice water is just about as painful! After I couldn't stand it another moment, I took my hand and let it air dry. It felt like my whole hand was burned, but it turned out to be just the joints of my (left) hand. At this point, I looked up what to do about this sit-she-ashun. The Mayo people said to soak it ( which I did) and then to wrap it. My symptoms pointed to second degree burns. I wrapped my hand up and amid tears and 4 ibuprofen headed off to show choir. That was not fun, but I couldn't miss it. I really couldn't only one song, which involved holding and dancing with towels. After about an hour, it really started to burn. Not soon enough, practice ended and I went home. I didn't stay there for long, but that's a different story. : /

This is what my hand looks like tonite (48 hours later). This isn't the best picture. I just quick snapped one. I can't really bend those fingers, so lots of things are near to impossible. Most notably, playing percussion instruments or pianos. Today at jazz band, the other piano player played the left hand parts while I played the right hand ones. It was actually fun! Typing this is challenging, but it's helping me move my fingers a little more. :)
Moral:
Look at the little red light!