Holy Hell! An Update!

For anyone who has enough spare time to dabble around this thing, I apologize. I acknowledge my lack of diligence in updating. It's slightly pathetic.

So what has happened?
Goodness gracious, what hasn't happened?

The rest of the tour this summer was the most exhausting/exhilirating/exhuberant/exhsomething experience of my life. I hated it at times, I loved it most times, and I want to be on the road again. Sadly, college has once again gotten the better of me.

So in the past few months I have gone from being completely broke and completely happy and carefree to being well payed and overworked/exhausted but driven. I figure, I've got one more semester of this and then I am o-u-t and off into the world. I'm okay with that.

Tony is in Africa, so that's something. I would like to voice my general enthusiasm for that kid. I have never felt/watched myself develop while I was in a relationship like I did with him. Prior to him I felt like every romantic endeavor I had was just part of the process of breaking myself down. For the first time I found myself in something that was building myself back up, and I'm a better person because of it. Hats off to him for going to Africa for two and half years. It'll be interesting to see what man he has grown into when he gets back.

A few weeks ago my cousin Jennifer passed away. It was completely unexpected and traumatic. Also, my first brush with death, and it left me quite shaken. I've come to the conclusion that death is a deep heavy breath for those left behind, a breath of exhaustion. It's also terribly personal and not a subject I care to disclose too much information about on the www.
Let's just say my foundations were stirred, and I'm in the process of repair.

My creative writing minor was probably the greatest idea I've ever had. I'm in four english classes right now, a french class, and media ethics. I've decided writing is an venture I will be in pursuit of for the rest of my life. If I hope to never reach the day where I feel my writing is sufficient and completely refined, because that will be the day I've lost my passion for the written word, if that makes sense.
One accomplishment I am incredibly proud of is the alliance I forged myself over the summer with alot of really great authors.
Books I read this summer (and recommend to the masses)

The Fountainhead
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close
Dandelion Wine
Self-help
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Dharma Bums
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Great Gatsby (again)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
What is the What
Best American Essays
A Good Man is Hard to Find (and other short stories)
Love
Down and Out in Paris and London
The Prince of Tides

...I think I might be missing a few, but that's the most of them.
It was incredible. I miss having that much free time.

More later, I promise. It's just that I have a big day tomorrow and should probably hit the hay now.