Good morning, everybody! Happy Valentine's Day!

My roommate said something on her blog about Valentine's Day that I really appreciate:

"Just know that if you're bitter about the holiday, it's not because of it's commercialization of love, it's the fact you're lonely and bitter. Accept it and move on."

This morning we expounded on this. Why should someone stop at being bitter at the commercialization of love (Valentine's Day), and not be bitter at the commercialization of giving (Christmas) or of green (St. Patrick's Day) or of bunnies (Easter)?

I'm glad today is Valentine's Day, and I'm single.

Then again, I think I'm going through an extremely optimistic period of my life. I'm ahead on all my homework (I've done it all for this week, and next week is Missions Conference - no school), and the sun boosted my spirits, and pretty much nothing is going wrong in my life. I think God wants me to use my extra time to pray, especially since it seems like everyone of my friends here are going through difficult, stressful times, except me.

It's amazing how quickly I can forget that I've gone through really stressful times, and account my current lack of stress to my own doing. This attitude makes me want to tell people, "Oh, you should get ahead on your homework, like me" or "Oh, you should be more happy. I feel happy, so you should too!" Even though the reason I don't have homework is mainly because I have a slow week this week and I'm happy because of the absence of bad in my life. How annoying it would be to hear things like that!

So, instead I'm praying.

It's 8 30 am. I'm drinking tea. It was relaxing up until this point, when I took a drink and it went down the wrong pipe and I had a coughing fit. But I'm better now.

I don't have class until 12 30. Yay! I have a lot to get done in that time.

I just read Voltaire's Candide last night. I have to read it for Western Civilization. I was going to spread out my reading of it today, but last night I thought, "I'll read it till midnight" and I finished it at 11 30. That means today I'll be reading Marx and Engels The Communist Manifeseto. Super short. I get the feeling I'll have to read it chunk by digestible chunk at a time.

If anyone from home wants to come visit me, anytime in the next two weeks would be PERFECT! I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, and Saturday afternoon-evening. You can eat in the cafeteria off my card, attend classes with me if you want, experience Portland, and hang out with me!

Well, I just finished my tea. That means it's time for me to go.

Goodbye! Have a pleasant day!