im sooo excited!!! there's a hurricane coming, well it's probably going to miss us here in miami, but they cancelled school for the next 2 days and we have monday off so, NO SCHOOL TILL TUESDAY!!!!
anyone interested in coming down here for a hurricane party get a flight down now!!! we're gonna be having ourselves some fun this weekend!!!!
;)

ok, so i don't really know what ot write about so i guess i'll just do a little of a whole lot of things...
So im back down in miami, living on campus for my 4th year in a row, yeah, im a dork, but whatever, it's convienent, and a whole lot easier. im living with jess, a coxwain on my team and alex and imani, two girls on the basketball team. they are all really nice girls, and they all crack me up constantly. i just met alex and imani this fall really, alex is a transfer and imani is in her second year so i guess i just didn't really meet her last year. anyways, its a lot of fun here, but our front door sucks and locks automatically, unlike any other door i've had here, and i've locked myself out once and alex did it for her second time today.
well aside from the living arrangements, "stuff" seems to be going well. we havent started rowing yet but we have started lifting and as a result my ass hurts. all the squats and lunges really do a toll on my hamstrings and butt muscles. OUCH. but we have done a lot of our team meeting things and such. but oh, i cnat wait to get on the water!!!! it just makes my day to get up at 5:30, head down to the boathouse and have a good row then back to campus by 9. It really just sets my days up. but im a little worried about when that time will come. we have been getting up at 7:00 lately and not doing neirly the amount of stuff as we will soon be doing and i'm exhausted as well as sore. so i guess im not really looking foreward to getting up at 5:15 just yet.
and relating to rowing, i have been working on fundraising stuff for our team to go to australia over thanksgiving this year to row in a race there, but plans changed and they aren't going till next year, well that sucks for allof us seniors :( but we are still going to do the stuff. we are planning an ergathon that will help rais money for "their" trip next year and for habitat for humanity. and also going to try to build a house for them too, im thinking that will be awesome fun and group bonding for us. i think its hard to get 30+ college girls to really bond, but anything is worth a try right? my co-captain, anna and i have been trying to think of things to bring unity to the team all summer and still now but we really havent come up with many good ideas. but we still all love each other ;) and have a great time together.
ANd then there is school, classes seem boring this semester, well all except for my sr design class which just seems scary. it means im finally a sr and that im almost done which means i need to figure out what i am going to do with myself for the rest of my life. and its really scary because i really don't think i know how to do what we are suppossed to be able to do. we are in groups of 6 people and we are all either civil, environmental or architectural engineers, i'm an arch engineer of course. and we have to design some building, EVERY ASPECT OF THE BUILDING. thats crazy, i really hope those civil and environmental engineers know a lot cuz there was a lot of stuff that i was looking at for the first time the other day. and we all had to kinda break off to group up and pick our buildings and the options were stupid but there was a school building which all the "smart" kids had to go to, then some water piping something up in jacksonville that a lot of environmental guys had to go to then a housing development that a bunch of guys who are notorious for cheating and just being smelly went to so i definitly avioded, then the marina which looked really cool, but they already had a bnch of ppl, so i couldn't join them, and then the shopping center. Now i am really not a fan of shopping centers and such and this is the project that we will be doing for the rest of the year and take with us to our job interviews, but whatever, i got stuck with the shopping center. BUt ideally, what i would love to do is stadiums, anything like that would be amazing, i lo
ve
sports and arenas and such and i was dying to do one of those. but no, im stuck with the shopping center which after discussing with my group, we kinda changed it to office building and to make it even simpler, an warehouse. now i really don't want to spend a year on a warehouse, but we'll see what works out. oh, but the thing that galls me, is the group that was doing the marins somehow changed the marina idea into a stadium!!! now they get to make a stadium!!! how the hell did that happen??? so now i want to up them one and have a warehouse with a shopping center and offices and a dodgeball court in the warehouse!!! suppounded by slip-n-slides!!! or ya know, something!!! but who knows, im still excited about it, we can really do just about anything, but not too hard that its tooooo much work but not too simple that its just too simple. oh, im sure it will be fun!!!
and then of course i can't leave out "someone" who i'm not gonna name, he doesn't need to be named. but its kinda a sore subject this year, he graduated last year, well actually 2 years ago, but was around last year. but now he is gone. it's really so sad. I would see him EVERYDAY every other year. it would really make my day, just brighten up everything. i'll explain him at a different time maybe, he needs an entire entry to fully understand. But he's gone now. my only contact with him is through AIM. how sad is that. I don't even have a phone number, or hell, i don't even knwo where he is right now. i just want to see him again, everyday, just like before, but a little different than before. but im working on that kinda.
but as for now, im tired. its late. i have to get up at 7 to run stairs, ahhh, 15x8 flights. its gonna hurt, but its worth it. and hurricant frances is coming, maybe, but ofcourse its coming over the weekend and into our long weekend. come on, i just wnat them to cancel a few days of classes. or at least a day, and not a friday, come on, who really has friday classes anyways. oh well, the rain is gonna be fun to play in but now im just thinking of my sheets ;) its bedtime for julie. wow, this is long and look at all the typo's and spelling errors, i think im just gonna leave them in ;) byebye for now

so hello from miami, i got her a few days ago but havent gotten online until earlier today. sounds like you guys had a blast at the big birthday party!!!! I wish I could have been there, actually could have met some of you, I’ve actually only met mike once… oh well, later I guess.
juxtaposition time:
ok, so here’s my rant… So I was at church this evening with my mom, it’s a nice little church right off campus, gets quite a mix of college students and families and old people. But what I saw today just bothered me. Now first, I’m just gonna say how shocked I was 2 years ago when they started announcing before mass for people to please turn off their cell phones so they don’t disrupt mass. And of course people still don’t always turn them off and they ring, but immediately people still grab for the phones and silence them. But today, oh today… this girl in the row right in front of me of all places first lets the phone ring obnoxiously loud, then plays around with it a bit, then, oh then she starts text messaging back and forth with someone. And I guess if it was actually a big emergency that would be ok, but it wasn’t. She carried on giggling as she fumbled with this little phone, pounding little messages. Now I guess she could have been relaying the priest’s sermon to someone, but that wasn’t even funny enough to be giggling that much. Oh well whatever, I know this just shows how sometimes people just really bother me, ahhh!!! Ok, I’m done ranting, wow it feels good to get that one off my chest ;)
ok, well have a good day and i'll get some stuff from here later, i need to finish unpacking and settling in and sending my mom home so i can finally clear my head and begin my sr year of college!!!! :)

... to finish packing and days I have left here in buffalo. Im leaving to go back to school in Miami on wednesday, and it feels like I really haven't been here that long at all this summer. I've been back since the very beginning or july but it feels like its only been a few weeks. I guess i spent most of the summer rowing, but even that didn't seem to hardly last long at all. and then i did a few other things here and there like laser eye surgery and an eric clapton concert and the music thing on the 3rd (i think) when i met mike and i went to the fair the other day and a bills game this evening (well that was exciting though, i love those games!!!). And of course i hung out with amanda a little, but i really havent even seen her that much and really havent seen anyone else from buffalo at all. maybe i've just lost contact with ppl or hell i know i've broken ties with others a while back, but it just feels like i've wasted the past month and a half. Maybe thats not how i should say it, but i can't think of any other way to say it. I guess i just can't figure this place out. I've really tried to enjoy it here, i know the summer is my time to do it cuz once winter break comes along when i come back again, the cold and snow always turn me off right away. i just can't stand the cold, and despise being surrounded by snow with a passion. that's all from bad snow experiences when i was younger but i can't forget about it. but yeah back to summer being my time to let buffalo shine, the weather this summer has been terrible. I really can't remember a summer in the past 21 years here in buffalo when it has been so cold and just not nice. buffalo is supposed to be one of the nicest cities in the summer, but it really dropped the ball on this one.
All in all, i still really havent discovered what so many of you love about buffalo. maybe i will some day, but i really don't think it's gonna happen in the next 2 days.
maybe next summer i'll try with a different approach, try new things, figure this all out. Oh, and that still all depends if i do come back next summer. once i graduate i'm probably going to have to figure stuff out with jobs and stuff. eeek, once i graduate, when am i going to graduate??? herm... well who knows...
wish me luck on my last 2 days!!!!

I went up to st. catherines, canada the other night for a end of the rowing season party thing. I row for west side, the buffalo team, but a girl i row with in miami rows for st catherines and told me to come up. ok, so it was fun, we had a good time, even ran into a few westside people. but i'd have to say the "funny" part of the evening was after a few of the st. catherines guys went streaking and swimming at the finishline of the water they row in. so they were all out there, trying to get some of the girls in, unsuccessfully of course. we were having fun just observing, when a cop car pulls up. we all ran of course, and the boys get out of the water, looking for their pants to run as well. the spotlight from the car lit up the area pretty well for them to find their clothes. one guy; however, still could not find his pants. the cops finally turned off the lights, and this one stupid guy walks over to the car, still naked and all, and asks the cops, "can you turn the light back on, i can't find my pants." so they do, he finds his pants, and we all run. end of story. but really now... who would ever go up to a cop car, naked, asking them to turn the spotlight back on so they could find their pants???? well it worked, and everyone got away ok so there you go. if you too get in that awkward situation, just ask the cops to turn the spotlights back on. it worked for him, it might work for you too.

hey, i think i finally figured out how to use this sketch thingy, maybe.... well here is my drawing of my little 16 yr old not so young puppy. her name is tucker. she just had her last birthday a few weeks ago, and she is showing her age. the dog just sleeps all day. she used to bark at all the kids on our street and anyone who came to the door, but now she just sits there and only gets up when my brother goes to the refrigerator cuz she knows she can get some food out of him. but she's still my cute little puppy, even with her what used to be jet black hair all salt and pepper now ;) well that drawing i made can't really do her justice, She's much cuter than that, but that thing was hard to use. but i still thought it would be nice to throw her in here too.

SO today was a sad day kinda. it was my last day of summer rowing for this summer. I have been rowing down at west side rowing club all summer, or at least while i have been back in buffalo. We have been competing here in buffalo and also up in st catherines, ontario which is where we concluded our season today. we always finish off the season with the Canadian Henley. its a big prestigious race. It's what everyone talks about all summer. And so we got there, i was entered in 2 categories, an 8 and a 4, and you have a lot of qualifying races before the finals. and so we didn't qualify in either the 8 on tuesday or our 4 this evening. And although im satisfied that we raced hard and all, im sad we lost and are done and now i'll probably never race with some of those girls ever again.:( sure i'll be competing against them during the spring and fall seasons, but thats not the same. well I hope some of the other west side boats do well this weekend and that we are a little more successful next year. ;)

So i got this little picnic set from my mom... she won it somewhere but didn't want it. So... today i went on a picnic. Amanda and i went to the river walk in tonowanda. i think that's what it's called, i don't think i've ever heard of it before today. but it was a great day for it, so sunny and warm. the picnic was fun, we watched a guy on his jet ski throw himself off the thing head first into the water about 50 times, and we made friends with several birds, unfortunately i almost accidentally killed one of them. I guess i didn't know birds couldn't chew, so when i threw one a wheat thin, it swallowed it whole and started choking. the poor thing was squealing for at least 15 minutes, it appeared to feel better after that and walked away. After that whole extravaganza we found a non-muddy spot to throw around the frisbee. after about 2 hours of confirming that neither of us are any good at frisbee, i landed it about 12 feet up in a tree. with little help from neither of my shoes, which also ended stuck up in the tree, amanda and i decided to swing my towel at the branches, eventually freeing one of the shoes. i then tied that shoe to the towel and in about 5 more minutes we finally retrieved both shoes and the frisbee. However after battling with that tree for a good half hour we decided to call it a day and head home. So i hope my picnic story inspired you to head out on a little picnic adventure yourself, but i know you can only dream of it being as eventful as mine was.

hello, i'm julie. i'm new to all of this journal thing so i really don't know what to write but i'll come up with something eventually. keep in touch...