what a day...

happy(?) ash wednesday...

i've been up since 7, so i could be on campus by 9 reading away at applications... best quote today?

"my earliest memory is sitting on the toilet counting things"... i was like "dude, where you were at is an unnecessary detail", but so it goes... we get a variety of applicants :-P i finally got to the end of the stack around lunchtime, around when scott showed up to the office ready to go back to his own house for a bit... so yay for making it through over 100 REU applications in less than a day and a half!

anyhow, scott around, and me done with work a little sooner than expected, we went to his house to play pool... he won 3 games, i won one (he hit the 8 ball in too soon), but it was fun... said hi to eric and sam who had just woken up (it was freakin afternoon already!), and then scott offered to treat me to IHOP, so we went...

now back on campus, and what is lara up to? researching campus columbariums... yeah, that sounds strange but background:

my friend nicole died in september 2003 in a car wreck. her family came up with the idea of intering her ashes in a columbarium built on the valparaiso university campus. they tentatively had a verbal go-ahead and no objections were raised. when the chair of the theology department died from cancer this fall it was said he would be placed in the same columbarium the board of directors were taken aback as they apparently hadn't taken the idea seriously before, whereas nicole's family was ready to inter her ashes at the start of january 2005. yuck.

so instead of her burial, as expected, her parents went to valpo to bring her urn home to florida (it had been in the head chaplain's office at the campus chapel for the past year+) last month, and a committee has been formed to investigate the pros and cons of putting up a columbarium on the university's campus. there was an email sent out last night that the committee must submit their report by march 15, so they'll take input up til february 15... i forwarded the email to all valpo friends i have who knew nicole, and am brainstorming on what i'd like to say... i figure facts about what other universities have done with the issue (who do have campus burial plots... and there are at least half a dozen such places in the country) and why doesn't hurt the case. so yeah, i'm researching columbariums until my next class... don't i lead an exciting life?

class, then ash wednesday church... it's a long day.

later dudes.