Diane's blog

Ever since I can remember I have LOVED to play basketball. My parents have a picture of me when I was like 2 and i was dribbling a basketball out in the driveway. I remeber when I was probably like 7 or 8 and I held a basketball camp in my driveway and I made all of my friends come and shoot with me. In 5th grade I was finally able to join the community basketball team and I love every minute of it! then in 7th grade I joined the Century girl's Traveling "A" basketball team! We were the best of the best at our school! In 9th grade I tried out for the team and made the "A" team. I loved this team so much, and I loved playing on this team, but then with 3 weeks left in the season my coach was killed in a car accident. Sometimes this would make some people want to quit basketball but this just made me want to play even more. Basketball started to become my pain killer because when I was playing I didn't think about how much I was hurting because I could see my coach anymore, or how I had a bad day in school. All I would think about was playing the game and trying to win. Also in 9th grade I started to watch the University of Minnesota's women's basketball team, and this made my love and need for basketball even greater. During the summer going into my 10th grade year all I would do was practice out in my driveway everyday. When basketball season rolled around I made the varsity team, but for the most part I played on the Junior Varsity team, which was still quite an accomplishment for a sophomore. My passion for basketball just kept growing and growing though out high school. My senior year I was voted by my teammates to be a co-captain with one of the other seniors. Now that I'm in college it just seems like something from my life is missing. For the past 4 years I've been going to practice for 3 hours a day every weekday from the beginning of Novermber to the end of February. I've joined an intramural team but it just isn't the same as going to a practice everday and running the suicides, and shooting all of the free throws. I just feel as though I'm missing some important part of my life now, and I really wish that I could get it back.

Posted by Diane Brown at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today my dad took me out to eat at Annie's Parlour for dinner with my brother, his friend, and then my dad's friend. This was probably the best meals, in more than one way, that I've had in a really long time, actually probably since Thanksgiving!! It was so nice seeing my brother and my dad again! It seems like my brother keeps getting bigger every time that I see him. This is a really good thing because right now he is a little short for his age, and he is also a little stocky! Getting back to the food...I love the food at Annie's! The probably have the best burgers in all of Dinkytown, or the University of Minnesota campus! Oh, and did I mention their malts? They are basically AMAZING, especially their hot fudge malt shakes!!! I love them. I wish that they had food like this in the dorms. I mean the food in the dorms isn't that bad, but it isn't great! I'm just glad that I got to have one good meal with my family before finals start!

Posted by Diane Brown at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With finals this week i've really been stressing about studying. All I keep telling myself is that I only have one more week of this and then I'm free of homework, and school for almost a whole month!! Im really really really glad that we don't have a final in this class because now it is just one less thing that i have to worry about studying for! And that makes me really excited. For the last couple of days it seems like I've been doing nothing but studying for my psychology test. the material really isn't that hard its just that there are probably like 300 terms and concepts that we have to know! Also I had trouble figuring out what I should study first, and when I don't konw what to study, then I just don't study. I'm also really nervous for my math final because it is worth 300 POINTS!! This is just disgusting how many points it is worth! Oh, and my chem. final, well I'm trying to not even think about that final! On my last midterm I got a 90 divided by 2 percent on the test. For those of you who are no good with math, that is a 45%. And I really need to do well on this final so that I can get a good grade in the class since I'm going into med. school. AHHHHHHHHHHH! I just hate how stressful finals are!!!!

Posted by Diane Brown at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have really enjoyed watching these film. I think that it is really interesting how people change over time in their apperance, and ideas about how they want to live their lives. I really like the stories about the people who were not rich but still made it to the universities or made a business like Paul, and the other guy who now teaches at Madison. I really like stories like that. I also think it is interesting that some of the kids when they were little had their whole life planned out to where they were going to go to school all the way up thourgh the university and then what they were going to do for a job. It seems like only a couple of the kids actually followed though with what they said they were going to do. I found it interesting that some of the people who were really rich when they were younger ended up worse off than the people who were brought up in poor homes, or in the boys home. I think that this shows that money isn't everything, but that having a loving family and friends is very important to living a successful life. Over all I have really enjoyed watching these films. I really wish that we could have watched a couple more in class, or at least up till they were 28. So now I might have to go out and try and rent that part and see what happens.

Posted by Diane Brown at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During high school my finals were never untill the end of January, usually right on my birthday. So during December I never had to think about studying for finals. Now that I'm at the U and finalsare in December (this week) I'm having a little trouble concentrating because I'm still in the mind set that finals aren't till the end of January. Also I'm having studying for my finals, especially my psychology final, because ther,e is so much to study that i don't know where to start, and when I don't know where to start then I don't sudy. This is really bad because I really need to do well on my psychology finall so that I can get an A in the class. I know that getting A's are not the most imporant thing in the world but A's are really imporant to me. I'm also a little worried about my chem final because on my last chem midterm I failed it horribly! Hopefully my finals this year will go smooth and I'll get the grades that i want to get!

Posted by Diane Brown at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the blog that I wrote called "a girls weekend at the cabin" I told a story about how my friend had never shot a shotgun before and how it almost knocked her over when she shot it. Well my dad got her shooting the gun on tape so I had a friend help me to post in on youtube. I think that this footage of her is really really funny. I think it might be just because she is so surprised by how much kick back there really was or because she had never shot a gun before. Either way it is still pretty funny and I hope that if you go and watch it on youtube.com that you like it and also think that it is funny. (remember, just type in "Brigette and the shotgun")

Posted by Diane Brown at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During class last week we had a discussion on gay and lesbian marrigaes or something like that. The only people who spoke up in class were the people that were for gay marriage. I know that there were at least 3 or 4 people in the class, including me, that dissagre. The reason I didn't speak up in class was because I didn't want my ideas to be shot down. Also I didn't want people to think that I hate gays and lesbians because I don't. I just really don't like what they are doing. I have a couple friends who are lesbians, and I also have a couple friends who are gay and i really like hanging out with them, I just don't really like what they are doing. I think that maybe next time I'm going to try and speak up in class when we have a discussion and only one side is arguing.

Posted by Diane Brown at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This last week was just not a very good week for me. I couldn't concentrate on my homework because of what was going on, and when I was silent it was all that I could think about. Then the other day i realized that a lot of times something bad has to happen in your life to bring you even closer to God. I really don't like this fact, but hard times really are blessings in disguise. They really do bring you closer to God because you really have to depend on Him to help you though! I think that this last week has strengthened my faith in God, because I know that I would still not be able to study or do anything if he hadn't helped to calm me down, and help me not to worry!!!

Posted by Diane Brown at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Saturday Lauren and I went and sold tickets at a basketball tournament called the Break Down. The fall of my senior year I had played in tournament held by the Break Down, so I thought that it would be kinda fun to go work at the tournament. The tounrament was being held at Hopkins High School, so we had to take a taxi to get there. That was kind of interesting, I'm really not a big fan of taxis, I think that they are kind of sketchy. We got there safely at about 9:00. The first game started at 10:00 so we had to start working right away. What we did was quite easy, all we had to do was stamp people's hands after they paid us, and that was all. Also we got to eat free food from the concession stands! That was awesome because I love Papa John's pizza, so I ate a ton of pizza and drank a lot of free pop. The last game that was being played was between Hopkins and some other smaller school. We had a lot of problems with the people from Hopkins because the prices were so high. For an adult to get in it was $10 and for a student ages 6-18 it was $8 to get in. We had girls that would come up to us with their $300 designer handbags and basically yell at us and complain that they had to pay$3 more to get into the game! That is ridiculous!!! Spending an extra 3 bucks is like throwing money on the ground for them! That was the only part of the whole day that was really annoying and not fun. Besides that it was a pretty good day, especially because I made $100!

Posted by Diane Brown at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This last weekend I took 3 girls from my bible study up to my cabin so we could just get away from campus. The first night that we were up there it started to snow big beautiful snow flakes! So we went and ran around in the snow for a while, untill we found some Honey Vanilla cigars from the Dominican Republic lying around. So we took one out side and started to smoke it. It was really funny because I was the only one who had ever smoked a cigar before, and it was kinda funny because at first the other girls didn't quite understand the idea that you don't acutally inhale the smoke you just let it sit in you mouth so you can taste it. So it was pretty funny watching some of them. Then the next day we decided that we were going to go 4-wheeling in the snow. So we all put like 5 layers of clothes on and jumped on the 4-wheelers and headed out to the iron-ore mines! It was so beautiful out there with the snow on the trees and everything like that. When we got back though we were soooo cold! After we warmed up we went out and shot a couple shot guns. That was also funny to watch because again I was the only girl who had ever shot a gun before. I didn't shoot any of the more powerfull guns because I didn't have any ear plugs, but one of my friends shot a 30/30, and it almost knocked her over because she wasn't expecting that big of a kick back! I almost peed my pants because it was so funny! Over all it was a great weekend, and it felt so good to get off campus! I can't wait till finals are over and I can go back up again!!!

Posted by Diane Brown at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)