Oh no I'm soooo far behind...
I'll try to remember things in a semi-chronological order...
About a week and a half ago, Andrew & I headed off toward Chicago. Well first of all we had to go to IKEA, because Andrew had been freaking out about what sort of coffee table he was going to "complete the apartment" with. Since most of the apt. is oak, beige, red, and navy blue, we had to exhaust all oak-en possiblities within the Madison area. This meant veering off highways suddenly to visit pricey furniture stores with "OAK" in the title, and measuring and re-measuring the living room space and comparing it with dimensions of various coffee tables as described online. Thank God, Andrew did, indeed, find a nice coffee table equivalent.
Afterwards, we were free to visit Karuna and Craig! We talked for a bit over tea, I met the puppy (who was inordinately fond of Andrew's shoes), and then we headed into the city. So many tall buildings! And lots of great park spaces and fountains. We saw huge panels that we thought were merely fountains at first, and then we realized that they also functioned as tv screens. HUGE tv screens. And Craig showed us the silver bean which was being polished up. Very impressed by the city, and it explains so much about why South Hadley wasn't exactly Karuna's favorite place to be. Plus, the city just seemed so much, well, cleaner than NYC. For dinner we went to Pizzaria Due -- yum -- and then we walked a bit more before heading back. Somehow, we timed our quick visit to B&N at exactly the right time to witness the Harry Potter-mania. Lots of kids. Lots of kids dressed up as book characters. And lots of kids drinking espresso. I was worried. I guess I'm glad that kids are reading, but God I wish kids got excited over really amazing time-tested, human truth-filled, mind-expanding novels and poetry. But alas, all the kids want are their Goosebumps and Harry Potter... Andrew, Anna & I were discussing this, and it finally helped me realize why I don't like H.P. that much -- as Anna says, it's simply too popularized and mainstream. I'd just look at it as a cultural artifact, instead of as a piece of art or a great work of literature. So I guess I'll stick to my own reading list this summer (which is being crafted after the scary oral quals list).
Anyway, I guess I got a bit ahead of myself up there, but the above mentioned conversation with Anna took place last Monday. We went to the Union terrace to watch Psycho on the screen outdoors (which was fabulous, I only wish I'd never heard or seen anything of it before so I could have been thoroughly and completely shocked). Afterwards, we showed Anna the apt. and talked for awhile.
Hmm... what else. Not even sure if I mentioned a prior trip to Lake Kegonsa -- we took a short nature walk and waded a bit (very nervous about the blue green algea). To get back to being in chronological order, that Tuesday was a big grocery shopping day... then we had a couple of stay at home sorta days since it was rainy. Andrew got the bikes fixed up, and we took a short ride to the lake & park right next to us. It was kind of pathetic, because I'm not so good with the coordination and balance stuff, and I'm rather nervous about sharing the road with automobiles.
Friday we did the whole county fair thing. This involved wandering through 4-H displays for nearly two hours (Andrew was kind of shocked, and especially confused by the cake decorating and baked goods contests). Somehow, I kept my interest level up while examining self-portrait photos of a moody looking preteen taken with her camera phone, and evaluating the size of those home grown onions and beets. We also, of course, had to walk through the commercial vendors. Andrew did not believe me when I said that we really don't want to do that. This area included a Pro-Life woman with little plastic fetuses in a wicker basket. At one point we saw a little girl approach the stand and treat the plastic fetuses like dolls. It was difficult to know whether to laugh or just feel rather disconcerted. I went with the latter.
Tucked behind the commercial vendors, we found the petting zoo section. There were chicks hatching in real time, and ducklings being handed over to sticky-fingered toddlers. Unfortunately, I missed a priceless scene, but Andrew related it to me afterwards:
At the bird petting station, two little girls were playing with a duckling. The older girl tried to hand the duckling to her younger sister, while their mother supervised, advising the younger girl to "not hold it so tightly." Then the father arrived on the scene, and directed to mom: "You're letting so-and-so hold it? Don't you remember what happened with..." And the mom said something to the effect of: "Oh, yeah, so-and-so, maybe we should just let your big sister hold it, and you can look." And the little girl relinquished the duckling and walked away crying. Ah the fair!
Andrew was also new to the whole idea of putting livestock and chickens on display. So we got a full tour of the beef and dairy cows, and saw a huge assortment of variously feathered chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Not to mention the rabbits, including one French lop that was seriously bigger than your average toddler.
Finally, we got to the entertainment and carnival section... cotton candy, Hawaiian ice, carnies yelling to Andrew "if your gf is worth $3, you'll play this game and win a stuffed monstrosity!" (OK, they didn't use the word "monstrosity," they didn't really have the imagination for that)... Saw a truly disturbing family act with singing pigs ("My dad began this show back in 1957..." saddest thing I've ever heard in my life), and then saw some acrobatics (in neon lime outfits, no less) and a hip hop group perform. Then finally a ride on the ferris wheel, which perfectly coincided with the red sun setting behind the horizon.
Saturday evening we followed up with a trip to a Madison Mallards minor baseball league game. Way overboard on the between-innings entertainment... baseball bat spinning (both men fell over, promptly, for the record), free sandwich and chicken skewer throwing (being literal here, not exaggerating), and water ballon slingshot tossing. We lost the game, but there was still a fireworks display afterwards. Nothing like being right under the booming...
Yesterday was scorching hot... so we went to a nicer side of Lake Mendota (don't tell Anna, she'd be worried for our health). But Andrew did call prior, and checked up on their testing. The attendant told him that their beach had tested negative to everything thus far in the season, so we went for it (but washed off in the showers REALLY well afterwards, and showered as soon as we got home). Kinda greenish water, with lots of weeds, but it was so hot and I still think it's better than chlorine and toddler-pee (i.e., public swimming pools). We also had to run some errands... in other words, return stuff that I'd bought. This will require some explaining...
WARNING: here begins rant about organic foods and parabens -- it might be really boring for you
So I've been wanting to go organic and more natural all around since, well, I became aware of my own mortality and the fact that our modern lifestyle seems to create a lot of cancer victims. Andrew & I have been pretty good about incorporating more organic foods... my cereal, milk, yogurt, and much of the produce is organic. Andrew often scoffs or jokes about it, but he finally checked up on some not-for-profit reports on pesticide residues in foods, and realized that underneath my rather preachy mode of talking about it, there are some actual facts and figures. Anyway, we're definitely aware, and following the little guidebook for 12 most/ least contaminated produce items... And luckily, Woodman's makes organic seem cheap enough on some things at least to be reasonable (blueberries for $2, avocadoes at about 1.30 each, and 3 pounds of apples for $2.50, for example). I've also been worried about animal products, ever since writing animal rights articles for WARM2Kids. So we've got to get the cage-free eggs, and the "smart chicken" sans antibiotics and hormones. We saw a clip on tv about the treatment of chickens at many farms, and after seeing the horribly diseased and mutilated birds for a few minutes, I think Andrew came around.
Anyway, with all this worrying, I also started thinking about what makeup and body products I use, and what businesses I'm thereby supporting. This spurred a visit to Whole Foods to get new moisturizers, sunblocks, and foundations. But then I realized that EVERY SINGLE THING had parabens in it. To catch you up on this in case you're not entirely paranoid like me: Parabens are chemicals that sometimes occur in nature, and which most cosmetics and personal care product manufacturers have taken up due to their low cost and efficiency at preserving everything from shampoo to blush. While they haven't been DEFINITIVELY linked with breast cancer, there was a big scare in the UK a while back, from what I can gather, when breast cancer tumor samples were found to contain un-broken-down parabens. They thought that this paraben-dosage might be due to deoderants, as it would explain why many tumors occur near the portion of the breast closest to the underarm, and why the left breast seems more susceptible to cancer (some investigator hypothesized that since most people are right handed, they'd apply deoderant more heavily on the left underarm). So scary, right? And when I saw that Breast Cancer Action (www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org) has addressed the parabens link, I figured, why risk it? Why not find stuff that DOESN'T contain a chemical that might not be safe? (After all, the cosmetics industry really isn't very tightly regulated... many products mysteriously don't have ingredient labels (my mascara doesn't, for example, and check out the Clinique website.. a search for "ingredients" didn't turn up a single hit for me.) ... and the tests done on rats to check the safety of parabens aren't that convincing. A one time huge dose does NOT simulate the effects of slathering on paraben-laden-products every day for like 50 years.)
So, after feeling totally betrayed by Whole Foods, I returned every single thing and bought my new products online from Avalon Organics & Burt's Bees (paraben free!) I also exchanged my unused sunless tanner (by Neutrogena, featuring a whopping five different forms of parabens) for the Coppertone variety (paraben-free, as I'd learned online from a fellow-shopper). Thank God Wal-Mart employees don't really care that you don't have a receipt! But after all, I'd never even cracked open the bottle (as must have been evident by my still-way-too-white skin).
I guess I'm slowly becoming a good fit for the Bay area, right?
WARNING: end of rant
Hmmm... not too much else to report, except for the movies & scrabble games...
I've been beating Andrew, badly, at Scrabble. Admittedly, this came after a few heavy losses on my side, and even one game that started and was then called off by me when Andrew used all his letters over TWO double word tiles. But now that I've scored around 380 for a couple of games, and used all my letters a few times, I feel like we're finally a pretty even match.
We've been watching a lot of the OC... probably about half way through season one now. Such fun.
Also, I've been watching the Star Wars movies (in order) so that we can see the third in theaters. We also got around to watching Resident Evil, which we totally enjoyed. Difficult to figure out what was going on at first (neither of us had played the video game), but a good fun time afterwards. Hard to fit in mutants AND zombies, but they did it! (being sarcastic here, just wanted to verify that.) It was also kinda creepy when the fire alarm went off midway through. Someone apparently burnt pizza.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
So now that I've been in Madison for over a week, I thought it might be a good idea to update so I don't fall too far behind... We've had some adventures...including, last Friday, wandering around Madison, visiting the Gap (yay for cheap capris) & getting Andrew set up with a new bank. The weather has been mostly great -- quite hot!
Last weekend, we were in search of Farmer's Markets... we visited one kind of sketchy one in the Wal-Mart parking lot (which was fairly successful since we got tomato plants & lettuce plants), as well as the more established one that is usually "on the square" but this Sat. was down a few blocks since the Art on the Square had taken over. It was a very, very hot and sunny day, and getting in line with all the other slowly staggering about lookers was excruciating. So we got our tomatoes & broccoli & onions & basil & lettuce and got out of there! In the afternoon we took a walk to the park that's like 5 minutes from Andrew's place... the water was looking kinda yucky, but nice views of the lake.
Sunday we took a trip to Sun Prairie, thinking that perhaps the last of the strawberries would be waiting for us at this family farm we looked up online. No such luck. So we got a good look at real farm country -- lots of long roads and cornfields. Much of the dairy products we've been buying are actually from Sun Prairie. We went down their quaint downtown, which was quite dead on Sunday (as a sign proclaimed on one shop, Sunday is "for church & fishin' "). We realized that the Georgia O'Keeffe Memorial Ave did indeed have something to do with the town... a sign alerted us that O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie! On the way home, we stopped by a liquidator's, and I found Luna bars for 59 cents (which I'd been looking up online that morning) & horehound candy (which I never can find anywhere). So that was fun... in the evening we took our mango fried rice leftovers to a park, and ate as twilight came on.
Monday was a huge shopping day -- Andrew was off to the University in the morning to talk to a prof, and I stayed home to work on stuff after sleeping in. In the late afternoon we went to Woodman's to buy supplies for dinners for the rest of the week... took forever... Woodman's is the biggeset supermarket... but doesn't have very good organic produce (ie they haven't got much, not even organic apples). So we still had to supplement with Jenifer's market. But oh well. We were starving by the time we got home, so I did the appetizers/ I'm-going-to-faint-while-making-dinner-if-I-don't-eat-somethings (brie & pesto roll & cheddar & granny smiths). As an aside: Jenifer St. Market had THE BEST granny smiths I've ever tasted (and organic, too!!) Anyways, Andrew made his famous pesto, and all was well again.
Yesterday we were on a pretty good schedule, we were quite proud of ourselves. We headed off to the zoo in the afternoon -- saw a gi-normous Galapagos Tortoise (apparently they grow up to 4 feet in diameter, and can weigh hundreds of pounds), bears (black, grizzly, and polar -- all actually awake!), flamingos (I bet they're confused, what the f*&# are they doing in Wisconsin??!!), giraffes, an ostrich guarding her egg, and, best of all, five young lions! The lion cubs were born in Oct., were available to be seen in late April, and are now frolicking about in their own large playing area. The entire time we watched them, one or another was stalking an oblivious brother or sister, chasing one another along the rocks, or pouncing in a not-so-stealthy manner. Adorable! We realized how much smaller they were than adult lions, when we saw the female/ male pair. Huge! The seals & river otters were also active & funny -- the seals kept gurgling as if trying to get something out of their throats. It was good weather -- slightly drizzly but cooled down (thankfully).
For dinner, we had sushi night -- w/ mango, avocado, cucumber, and smoked salmon. Stuffed ourselves, as usual. And we were actually ready to settle in for a movie before it was dark out!
Movie watching lately... I'm catching up on zombie-genre movies, so I finally saw Shaun of the Dead. I LOVED the part where they're all pretending to be zombies to "fit in" and get through the crowd of dead. Hilarious. And all the fake outs, and the proper British manners that get in the way of surviving zombie attacks. And that the main character took so long to realize what was going on. Great! And for Merrie: Coldplay definitely was involved -- if you watch the TV clips they show after the attacks at the end of the movie, one includes a shot of Coldplay, and the name is even mentioned! (I guess the lead was a zombie-extra.)
Then last night we saw 28 Days Later, which we decided was just a rehashing of other zombie movies, namely Day of the Dead. The filming was so dark you could hardly tell what was going on... in a way that wasn't necessarily beneficial to the film (the whole oh-we-don't-know-what's-going-on-any-better-than-the-lead feeling can only work for so long). Calling it an infection instead of reanimation didn't really hold me... even one of the directors slipped by calling them "zombies or the infected" in a commentary clip of a deleted scene. And you never really get WHY the infected are so intent on going after other humans. Unlike zombies, they don't need human flesh to survive... and you'd think that "rage" could be directed against other targets as well. And how exactly do they survive at all, if we never see them eating or drinking? It just doesn't make much sense. And some of the infected, which supposedly have been running about for weeks, looked pretty damn healthy, not scrawny. Lots of similar stuff from the genre... like fortresses or protected areas run by soldiers & what do you do when a loved one turns into an infected & the issue of infecteds that look like children. And the ideas were old -- they struck me as pretty similar to Romero's Day of the Dead (the uninfected turning on one another, the threat of the women being subjected/ harassed under might-is-right, the question of who's more "human" (using infecteds to kill off unsavory uninfecteds, and filming the main character, Jim, in a similar manner to the infecteds when he's on a rampage in the final scenes in the house.)) We weren't terribly impressed... but it was entertaining while it lasted.
Also, we've been playing Scrabble -- I won the first night, and Andrew won the second. But I still maintain that his win was reliant upon my crappy letter selection (who gets four i's at once?? and w/ two u's?!) Yes... I take it too seriously.
Today there was a great op-ed piece by Sarah Vowell in the NYT -- here's a link. She's hilarious, and it doesn't hurt that I agree with her! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/opinion/13vowell.html?th&emc=th
Last weekend, we were in search of Farmer's Markets... we visited one kind of sketchy one in the Wal-Mart parking lot (which was fairly successful since we got tomato plants & lettuce plants), as well as the more established one that is usually "on the square" but this Sat. was down a few blocks since the Art on the Square had taken over. It was a very, very hot and sunny day, and getting in line with all the other slowly staggering about lookers was excruciating. So we got our tomatoes & broccoli & onions & basil & lettuce and got out of there! In the afternoon we took a walk to the park that's like 5 minutes from Andrew's place... the water was looking kinda yucky, but nice views of the lake.
Sunday we took a trip to Sun Prairie, thinking that perhaps the last of the strawberries would be waiting for us at this family farm we looked up online. No such luck. So we got a good look at real farm country -- lots of long roads and cornfields. Much of the dairy products we've been buying are actually from Sun Prairie. We went down their quaint downtown, which was quite dead on Sunday (as a sign proclaimed on one shop, Sunday is "for church & fishin' "). We realized that the Georgia O'Keeffe Memorial Ave did indeed have something to do with the town... a sign alerted us that O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie! On the way home, we stopped by a liquidator's, and I found Luna bars for 59 cents (which I'd been looking up online that morning) & horehound candy (which I never can find anywhere). So that was fun... in the evening we took our mango fried rice leftovers to a park, and ate as twilight came on.
Monday was a huge shopping day -- Andrew was off to the University in the morning to talk to a prof, and I stayed home to work on stuff after sleeping in. In the late afternoon we went to Woodman's to buy supplies for dinners for the rest of the week... took forever... Woodman's is the biggeset supermarket... but doesn't have very good organic produce (ie they haven't got much, not even organic apples). So we still had to supplement with Jenifer's market. But oh well. We were starving by the time we got home, so I did the appetizers/ I'm-going-to-faint-while-making-dinner-if-I-don't-eat-somethings (brie & pesto roll & cheddar & granny smiths). As an aside: Jenifer St. Market had THE BEST granny smiths I've ever tasted (and organic, too!!) Anyways, Andrew made his famous pesto, and all was well again.
Yesterday we were on a pretty good schedule, we were quite proud of ourselves. We headed off to the zoo in the afternoon -- saw a gi-normous Galapagos Tortoise (apparently they grow up to 4 feet in diameter, and can weigh hundreds of pounds), bears (black, grizzly, and polar -- all actually awake!), flamingos (I bet they're confused, what the f*&# are they doing in Wisconsin??!!), giraffes, an ostrich guarding her egg, and, best of all, five young lions! The lion cubs were born in Oct., were available to be seen in late April, and are now frolicking about in their own large playing area. The entire time we watched them, one or another was stalking an oblivious brother or sister, chasing one another along the rocks, or pouncing in a not-so-stealthy manner. Adorable! We realized how much smaller they were than adult lions, when we saw the female/ male pair. Huge! The seals & river otters were also active & funny -- the seals kept gurgling as if trying to get something out of their throats. It was good weather -- slightly drizzly but cooled down (thankfully).
For dinner, we had sushi night -- w/ mango, avocado, cucumber, and smoked salmon. Stuffed ourselves, as usual. And we were actually ready to settle in for a movie before it was dark out!
Movie watching lately... I'm catching up on zombie-genre movies, so I finally saw Shaun of the Dead. I LOVED the part where they're all pretending to be zombies to "fit in" and get through the crowd of dead. Hilarious. And all the fake outs, and the proper British manners that get in the way of surviving zombie attacks. And that the main character took so long to realize what was going on. Great! And for Merrie: Coldplay definitely was involved -- if you watch the TV clips they show after the attacks at the end of the movie, one includes a shot of Coldplay, and the name is even mentioned! (I guess the lead was a zombie-extra.)
Then last night we saw 28 Days Later, which we decided was just a rehashing of other zombie movies, namely Day of the Dead. The filming was so dark you could hardly tell what was going on... in a way that wasn't necessarily beneficial to the film (the whole oh-we-don't-know-what's-going-on-any-better-than-the-lead feeling can only work for so long). Calling it an infection instead of reanimation didn't really hold me... even one of the directors slipped by calling them "zombies or the infected" in a commentary clip of a deleted scene. And you never really get WHY the infected are so intent on going after other humans. Unlike zombies, they don't need human flesh to survive... and you'd think that "rage" could be directed against other targets as well. And how exactly do they survive at all, if we never see them eating or drinking? It just doesn't make much sense. And some of the infected, which supposedly have been running about for weeks, looked pretty damn healthy, not scrawny. Lots of similar stuff from the genre... like fortresses or protected areas run by soldiers & what do you do when a loved one turns into an infected & the issue of infecteds that look like children. And the ideas were old -- they struck me as pretty similar to Romero's Day of the Dead (the uninfected turning on one another, the threat of the women being subjected/ harassed under might-is-right, the question of who's more "human" (using infecteds to kill off unsavory uninfecteds, and filming the main character, Jim, in a similar manner to the infecteds when he's on a rampage in the final scenes in the house.)) We weren't terribly impressed... but it was entertaining while it lasted.
Also, we've been playing Scrabble -- I won the first night, and Andrew won the second. But I still maintain that his win was reliant upon my crappy letter selection (who gets four i's at once?? and w/ two u's?!) Yes... I take it too seriously.
Today there was a great op-ed piece by Sarah Vowell in the NYT -- here's a link. She's hilarious, and it doesn't hurt that I agree with her! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/opinion/13vowell.html?th&emc=th
Thursday, July 07, 2005
I'm now in Madison!!
But I'm gonna need to backtrack a bit with my bad updating record...
Before leaving Oregon, there were a few things that needed to be taken care of -- namely, taking care of alpacas & doing some last minute stuff with the family. Weds was my last big scrapbooking expedition. It was sad to pack everything up -- I hope Mer starts going down to Grammy's soon to take my place!
Thurs I helped Mum clean, and then we had an adventure up at Kingsley Lake. It was hot and sunny, but windy up at the lake, so we mainly just sat & snacked (I'd also brought a Chai Luna bar, I love that company). The lake was perfectly blue though, and I think Mom got a wild hair... because after we realized it would be an awfully goosebumpy experience to swim, we hit the old road up to Kingsley. This road really deserves some description: potholes and rocks everywhere, deep ruts from all the four-wheelers that are dug in so deep that a regular sized car could have the underside torn up. We bumped down this road for a few minutes, and luckily came upon the lower reservoir. I think it'd be cool to hike across the dike there, as it's now all blocked off from car use. We kept going, hoping to find Warren Lake. We went up gravel and dirt roads, taking every offshoot in the hope that it would be the old road to get to the lake. We found many logging areas & burn piles, a few impassable old roads, and a hiking trail (with candy stripe plants, very unusual looking, like candy canes with vertical stripes and little flowering parts along the curve). It was strange to find beer cans littering everywhere, even after driving on so many bad roads and finding such a supposedly remote area...
We never did find Warren Lake, and luckily Mom picked the right branches of the downhill trek, so we ended up getting home so Mer and I could go out for our beloved taco pizza at Pietro's. I think I've cracked how to make it, so that will have to be a cooking project this summer. We had orange soda, which you only need once a year, and lamented the changes made in the new "gaming area" or whatever since we were kids. The loss of the mechanical horse is really unacceptable.
Friday I job shadowed at the Whitman's, and in the evening we took a bbq -- complete with hormone & antibiotic & animal by-product free steak and corn on the cob. Mer and I wandered around Nottingham (not a Robin Hood delusion, we really have areas named Nottingham and Sherwood -- not to mention Little John) & tried to get as far across the river on rocks and sandbars as possible. It did look greener over there. On the way home we visited Linda, which was fun since I hadn't gotten to see her yet.
Sat. I took over alpaca duties, manning the store at the Whitman's & taking care of the creatures. A number of nice people came by & sedately fed the alpacas. Then, right over the time when Mer and I should have been eating lunch, this family from the Dalles pulled up. As you'll see, the fact that they came from the Dalles is rather important -- it explains a lot, as Mer and I thought. The family consisted of a grandmother with a smoker's cough, a teenage son with bushy hair, and two very active blond kids. They wanted to feed the alpacas, so we sat out there with them for about 40 minutes as the kids were indefatigable. They wanted to feed and pet every alpaca, it seemed, and then when they ran out, wanted more pellets. I didn't want to stand out there any longer, so I directed them toward the hay. I finally had to go back to homebase to help out another couple of visitors, so Mer had the arduous task of standing out there watching. Finally, the grandmother at least finished up, and returned to the store to cough on me and ask me to read price tags on things, since she didn't have her glasses on her. Eventually she walked out, hollering "thanks" and waiting for the kids in the car. Well the kids FINALLY came into the store, and wanted to know if the candy by the guestbook was free. So they had candy (dropping parts of wrappers on the floor in the process), and then like the mouse that's had a cookie, needed something to drink. So they asked for water, which I directed them toward, and then they wanted cups, and then of course they needed me to throw the cups away for them, and then they had to leave. It was rather, well, rude -- at least buy a magnet or something small after taking up that much of our time!! Geez.
That night we had an unhealthy dinner by my request -- fried chicken. And Mer and I went off for a drive on our own after feeding the alpacas -- we saw two sets of two deer (although I missed one of them, I'm taking Mer's word for it) while driving around eating laffy taffy and a york, the combination of which was nasty, in retrospect. Anyway, on the way back I saw something shiny moving in the dark -- definitely not the reflectors on the side of the road, but eyeshine from some animal. At first I thought perhaps a racoon or something, but as we got closer we realized it was a young dog -- and a German Shepherd at that! So we stopped the car, and Mer went after the dog, which actually ran by us again. Then I turned the jeep around to shine the headlights (because it was entirely dark by this time), but we never found the dog again. Mer and Tim even went to Tollbridge to warn the park supervisor that someone's dog might have gotten spooked by the fireworks & ran off. The supervisor was quite rude... who says "then don't" when someone starts off with "I hate to bother you, but" ??
Sunday morning me and Mer had alpaca duty, and then I had to finish getting ready to leave for the airport. We stopped by Arlene's on the way out of town, which was nice since I hadn't seen her yet. My flights were uneventful, but I've concluded that Phoenix is a horrible place to fly through. It was 112 degrees there, although a very nice dry heat, and they had very very limited food options that were both semi healthy and affordable. Sometimes I miss McDonald's -- at least if they had one there'd have been affordable salads! The salad I got cost over $4, and consisted of iceberg lettuce, shavings of red lettuce, bits of carrot, and two measly cucumber slices -- the romaine lettuce it claimed to contain was sparse at best, and the cherry tomatoes entirely nonexistent. Screw you, Pizza Hut! Who can't even manage to make a decent salad??!!
My only other complaint was on the second leg of the journey... The seatbelt sign was on nearly the entire flight, after the pilot initially estimated only 4-5 minutes of turbulence. The turbulence was barely noticeable, and an hour later when it went off, about half the plane started staggering toward the bathroom. Of course there are only two bathrooms on the plane for coach, so there was a line backed up about ten seats' length. A man sitting near the lavatory area urged me and another girl to go up to first class, and "start a revolution." I was tempted, but then you know they'll think you're a terrorist and detain your ass for God only knows how long. So I sat there in line, and after about five people had relieved their bladders, the f#*@ing sign went back on. Well we didn't sit down, probably because 1) we were already in line and needed, obviously, to use the facilities, and 2) because the pilot was an ass and probably wouldn't turn the sign off again until the engines were off. Needless to say, I noticed little to no turbulence while I was in the box they claim is a restroom -- and somehow I even irrigated my wisdom tooth hole (with water I brought in, of course, you don't want to drink the water they have on board in the lavatories).
Of course my luggage was about the last thing off the plane, so Andrew actually came in and found me at the baggage carousel long before I saw my distinctive purple bags come sliding by. We had a late night drive from Milwaukee to Madison, and then I got the grand tour of Andrew's spacious studio, which doesn't feel like a studio. The bathroom's all done up in turquoise, lime, and navy, and the living area/ kitchen area/ bedroom section is more oak/ beige/ red/ blue. Andrew wonders whether he'd be living in black and orange if he'd moved in around Halloween. He also says he'll need me to be here if he ever has friends over, or they'll think he's gay (yes, things really match around here that well. Plus Andrew is just tidy, which doesn't seem to be the norm for the male persuasion). After seeing the place, taking a bath, and having a snack, we didn't get to bed till around 4 am...
Naturally, we then slept in till at least noon, but there was nothing in the house to eat yet since Andrew had been too busy getting the place unpacked for me to do much shopping. Luckily he did get bread & my yogurt, so we had something before heading off for supplies. Our first stop was Walmart, where we loaded up on basics (can't really beat spices for 50 cents each). Then it was Cub's Foods, which we weren't impressed with, and after I found that they had no free range chicken or healthier meat options, I insisted that we leave. Finally found Jenifer Street Market, where I happily ordered organic ground beef, loaded up on brie, and hurried on out. We didn't have time to fix dinner before fireworks, but I did make up a snack plate of bread & crackers & blueberries & strawberries & brie (very red white and blue). So we had a little wine and cheese party while watching fireworks from the roof. So nice! Dinner was late -- spaghetti like how we made it at home (and the sauce from Walmart definitely needed some doctoring up).
Tuesday was more supply shopping... Andrew needed barstools for his breakfast bar, so we visited "The Stool Store." Yes, it's really called that. We settled on some wooden swivel chairs, and right across the road we located Woodman's, the large and elusive supermarket that my hosts at UW had brought me to way back in March. I couldn't remember the name, or find it listed in Google's yellow pages, so I was quite happy with the lucky find... the place is massive -- with the equivalent of about 5 aisles in a normal supermarket dedicated to ice cream. The equivalent of about 4 aisles goes to cheese, and the produce area is mind boggling. I allowed Andrew to get steak there, although I couldn't find organic, and we got some yummy ice cream that is apparently marketed to the Latino population (Fiesta chocolate taco). And of course we had to get cheesecurds!
We didn't get home till a little later than we anticipated... and didn't start dinner till about 8:30 pm. Since we were making enchiladas with homemade salsa and homemade tortilla chips, let's just say we didn't eat till around 11:30!! But it was yummy!
Yesterday Andrew was checking out car insurance, so I wandered over to a Salvation Army store -- found some random clothes (Gap like-new khaki beach pants for $1.50, a shirt for $2, and another shirt for $1), and some books. Andrew found a nice picture frame for the bathroom, and we were tempted to buy this Christian handbook for teens -- that claimed homosexuals will burn in hell, and that everyone should "stay clear" of the flames -- if only to burn the damn thing itself.
Afterwards we had to scout out kitchen utensils, as Andrew returned some to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked out more at Target. I was so tired of wandering around! Luckily I'd gotten some applesauce and bottled water to make me feel a little better while debating over what sort of grips Andrew really needs on a spatula (slotted or solid?), and what type of grilling device he might want (grill, electronic gadgetry, or skillet with ridged bottom?). ACK!
On the way home we stopped by Pier1 for little festive lights to put out on the patio, and I saw the canopies I need to decide on... they have them for about $20, in yellow, red, and green... trying to decide if I want red or green above my bed (which has green accents as well as pink/red flowers... hard choice).
Finally last night we cooked dinner at a decent hour. Andrew was in charge of the steaks, and I was all over the salad (I decided to add blueberries) and the corn on the cob. We felt uber grown up eating at the breakfast bar with the seat cushioned-stools and our wine glasses. So we finally settled down -- Andrew is always working on the task of unpacking and hanging things up on the walls -- and actually sat on the couch together for the first extended period to watch In Good Company! And decided that the couch is, indeed, comfortable.
This morning we heard the sound of children yelling and making odd noises -- we think there's some company next door perhaps specializing in treating mentally retarded children, as we've seen glimpses inside and Andrew has yet to investigate further. Maintenance got Andrew out of bed (I was already washing my face and brushing) to check on a few things. The explosive faucet that splashes water all over the counter was indeed missing a device, and now it apparently works like a normal faucet (thank God -- I have yet to use it this morning since Andrew's on pancake duty, and am actually looking forward to testing it out). The stove burner is supposedly fixed... we'll see.
So that's the whirlwind story of helping Andrew to set up his apartment!! Crazy times... we're finally getting settled enough to start enjoying local stuff, I think! Must find lakes & hiking trails, hopefully get into Chicago, etc.!
But I'm gonna need to backtrack a bit with my bad updating record...
Before leaving Oregon, there were a few things that needed to be taken care of -- namely, taking care of alpacas & doing some last minute stuff with the family. Weds was my last big scrapbooking expedition. It was sad to pack everything up -- I hope Mer starts going down to Grammy's soon to take my place!
Thurs I helped Mum clean, and then we had an adventure up at Kingsley Lake. It was hot and sunny, but windy up at the lake, so we mainly just sat & snacked (I'd also brought a Chai Luna bar, I love that company). The lake was perfectly blue though, and I think Mom got a wild hair... because after we realized it would be an awfully goosebumpy experience to swim, we hit the old road up to Kingsley. This road really deserves some description: potholes and rocks everywhere, deep ruts from all the four-wheelers that are dug in so deep that a regular sized car could have the underside torn up. We bumped down this road for a few minutes, and luckily came upon the lower reservoir. I think it'd be cool to hike across the dike there, as it's now all blocked off from car use. We kept going, hoping to find Warren Lake. We went up gravel and dirt roads, taking every offshoot in the hope that it would be the old road to get to the lake. We found many logging areas & burn piles, a few impassable old roads, and a hiking trail (with candy stripe plants, very unusual looking, like candy canes with vertical stripes and little flowering parts along the curve). It was strange to find beer cans littering everywhere, even after driving on so many bad roads and finding such a supposedly remote area...
We never did find Warren Lake, and luckily Mom picked the right branches of the downhill trek, so we ended up getting home so Mer and I could go out for our beloved taco pizza at Pietro's. I think I've cracked how to make it, so that will have to be a cooking project this summer. We had orange soda, which you only need once a year, and lamented the changes made in the new "gaming area" or whatever since we were kids. The loss of the mechanical horse is really unacceptable.
Friday I job shadowed at the Whitman's, and in the evening we took a bbq -- complete with hormone & antibiotic & animal by-product free steak and corn on the cob. Mer and I wandered around Nottingham (not a Robin Hood delusion, we really have areas named Nottingham and Sherwood -- not to mention Little John) & tried to get as far across the river on rocks and sandbars as possible. It did look greener over there. On the way home we visited Linda, which was fun since I hadn't gotten to see her yet.
Sat. I took over alpaca duties, manning the store at the Whitman's & taking care of the creatures. A number of nice people came by & sedately fed the alpacas. Then, right over the time when Mer and I should have been eating lunch, this family from the Dalles pulled up. As you'll see, the fact that they came from the Dalles is rather important -- it explains a lot, as Mer and I thought. The family consisted of a grandmother with a smoker's cough, a teenage son with bushy hair, and two very active blond kids. They wanted to feed the alpacas, so we sat out there with them for about 40 minutes as the kids were indefatigable. They wanted to feed and pet every alpaca, it seemed, and then when they ran out, wanted more pellets. I didn't want to stand out there any longer, so I directed them toward the hay. I finally had to go back to homebase to help out another couple of visitors, so Mer had the arduous task of standing out there watching. Finally, the grandmother at least finished up, and returned to the store to cough on me and ask me to read price tags on things, since she didn't have her glasses on her. Eventually she walked out, hollering "thanks" and waiting for the kids in the car. Well the kids FINALLY came into the store, and wanted to know if the candy by the guestbook was free. So they had candy (dropping parts of wrappers on the floor in the process), and then like the mouse that's had a cookie, needed something to drink. So they asked for water, which I directed them toward, and then they wanted cups, and then of course they needed me to throw the cups away for them, and then they had to leave. It was rather, well, rude -- at least buy a magnet or something small after taking up that much of our time!! Geez.
That night we had an unhealthy dinner by my request -- fried chicken. And Mer and I went off for a drive on our own after feeding the alpacas -- we saw two sets of two deer (although I missed one of them, I'm taking Mer's word for it) while driving around eating laffy taffy and a york, the combination of which was nasty, in retrospect. Anyway, on the way back I saw something shiny moving in the dark -- definitely not the reflectors on the side of the road, but eyeshine from some animal. At first I thought perhaps a racoon or something, but as we got closer we realized it was a young dog -- and a German Shepherd at that! So we stopped the car, and Mer went after the dog, which actually ran by us again. Then I turned the jeep around to shine the headlights (because it was entirely dark by this time), but we never found the dog again. Mer and Tim even went to Tollbridge to warn the park supervisor that someone's dog might have gotten spooked by the fireworks & ran off. The supervisor was quite rude... who says "then don't" when someone starts off with "I hate to bother you, but" ??
Sunday morning me and Mer had alpaca duty, and then I had to finish getting ready to leave for the airport. We stopped by Arlene's on the way out of town, which was nice since I hadn't seen her yet. My flights were uneventful, but I've concluded that Phoenix is a horrible place to fly through. It was 112 degrees there, although a very nice dry heat, and they had very very limited food options that were both semi healthy and affordable. Sometimes I miss McDonald's -- at least if they had one there'd have been affordable salads! The salad I got cost over $4, and consisted of iceberg lettuce, shavings of red lettuce, bits of carrot, and two measly cucumber slices -- the romaine lettuce it claimed to contain was sparse at best, and the cherry tomatoes entirely nonexistent. Screw you, Pizza Hut! Who can't even manage to make a decent salad??!!
My only other complaint was on the second leg of the journey... The seatbelt sign was on nearly the entire flight, after the pilot initially estimated only 4-5 minutes of turbulence. The turbulence was barely noticeable, and an hour later when it went off, about half the plane started staggering toward the bathroom. Of course there are only two bathrooms on the plane for coach, so there was a line backed up about ten seats' length. A man sitting near the lavatory area urged me and another girl to go up to first class, and "start a revolution." I was tempted, but then you know they'll think you're a terrorist and detain your ass for God only knows how long. So I sat there in line, and after about five people had relieved their bladders, the f#*@ing sign went back on. Well we didn't sit down, probably because 1) we were already in line and needed, obviously, to use the facilities, and 2) because the pilot was an ass and probably wouldn't turn the sign off again until the engines were off. Needless to say, I noticed little to no turbulence while I was in the box they claim is a restroom -- and somehow I even irrigated my wisdom tooth hole (with water I brought in, of course, you don't want to drink the water they have on board in the lavatories).
Of course my luggage was about the last thing off the plane, so Andrew actually came in and found me at the baggage carousel long before I saw my distinctive purple bags come sliding by. We had a late night drive from Milwaukee to Madison, and then I got the grand tour of Andrew's spacious studio, which doesn't feel like a studio. The bathroom's all done up in turquoise, lime, and navy, and the living area/ kitchen area/ bedroom section is more oak/ beige/ red/ blue. Andrew wonders whether he'd be living in black and orange if he'd moved in around Halloween. He also says he'll need me to be here if he ever has friends over, or they'll think he's gay (yes, things really match around here that well. Plus Andrew is just tidy, which doesn't seem to be the norm for the male persuasion). After seeing the place, taking a bath, and having a snack, we didn't get to bed till around 4 am...
Naturally, we then slept in till at least noon, but there was nothing in the house to eat yet since Andrew had been too busy getting the place unpacked for me to do much shopping. Luckily he did get bread & my yogurt, so we had something before heading off for supplies. Our first stop was Walmart, where we loaded up on basics (can't really beat spices for 50 cents each). Then it was Cub's Foods, which we weren't impressed with, and after I found that they had no free range chicken or healthier meat options, I insisted that we leave. Finally found Jenifer Street Market, where I happily ordered organic ground beef, loaded up on brie, and hurried on out. We didn't have time to fix dinner before fireworks, but I did make up a snack plate of bread & crackers & blueberries & strawberries & brie (very red white and blue). So we had a little wine and cheese party while watching fireworks from the roof. So nice! Dinner was late -- spaghetti like how we made it at home (and the sauce from Walmart definitely needed some doctoring up).
Tuesday was more supply shopping... Andrew needed barstools for his breakfast bar, so we visited "The Stool Store." Yes, it's really called that. We settled on some wooden swivel chairs, and right across the road we located Woodman's, the large and elusive supermarket that my hosts at UW had brought me to way back in March. I couldn't remember the name, or find it listed in Google's yellow pages, so I was quite happy with the lucky find... the place is massive -- with the equivalent of about 5 aisles in a normal supermarket dedicated to ice cream. The equivalent of about 4 aisles goes to cheese, and the produce area is mind boggling. I allowed Andrew to get steak there, although I couldn't find organic, and we got some yummy ice cream that is apparently marketed to the Latino population (Fiesta chocolate taco). And of course we had to get cheesecurds!
We didn't get home till a little later than we anticipated... and didn't start dinner till about 8:30 pm. Since we were making enchiladas with homemade salsa and homemade tortilla chips, let's just say we didn't eat till around 11:30!! But it was yummy!
Yesterday Andrew was checking out car insurance, so I wandered over to a Salvation Army store -- found some random clothes (Gap like-new khaki beach pants for $1.50, a shirt for $2, and another shirt for $1), and some books. Andrew found a nice picture frame for the bathroom, and we were tempted to buy this Christian handbook for teens -- that claimed homosexuals will burn in hell, and that everyone should "stay clear" of the flames -- if only to burn the damn thing itself.
Afterwards we had to scout out kitchen utensils, as Andrew returned some to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked out more at Target. I was so tired of wandering around! Luckily I'd gotten some applesauce and bottled water to make me feel a little better while debating over what sort of grips Andrew really needs on a spatula (slotted or solid?), and what type of grilling device he might want (grill, electronic gadgetry, or skillet with ridged bottom?). ACK!
On the way home we stopped by Pier1 for little festive lights to put out on the patio, and I saw the canopies I need to decide on... they have them for about $20, in yellow, red, and green... trying to decide if I want red or green above my bed (which has green accents as well as pink/red flowers... hard choice).
Finally last night we cooked dinner at a decent hour. Andrew was in charge of the steaks, and I was all over the salad (I decided to add blueberries) and the corn on the cob. We felt uber grown up eating at the breakfast bar with the seat cushioned-stools and our wine glasses. So we finally settled down -- Andrew is always working on the task of unpacking and hanging things up on the walls -- and actually sat on the couch together for the first extended period to watch In Good Company! And decided that the couch is, indeed, comfortable.
This morning we heard the sound of children yelling and making odd noises -- we think there's some company next door perhaps specializing in treating mentally retarded children, as we've seen glimpses inside and Andrew has yet to investigate further. Maintenance got Andrew out of bed (I was already washing my face and brushing) to check on a few things. The explosive faucet that splashes water all over the counter was indeed missing a device, and now it apparently works like a normal faucet (thank God -- I have yet to use it this morning since Andrew's on pancake duty, and am actually looking forward to testing it out). The stove burner is supposedly fixed... we'll see.
So that's the whirlwind story of helping Andrew to set up his apartment!! Crazy times... we're finally getting settled enough to start enjoying local stuff, I think! Must find lakes & hiking trails, hopefully get into Chicago, etc.!
Monday, June 27, 2005
Ack it's been awhile. Strange that I don't update as much now that I have so much free time, I guess it's because there isn't as much to say?
Hmmmm... Well, I've been doing a lot of scrapbooking w/ Grammy, which is an effective way of recovering and sorting memories... So I've been spending more time down in Hood River -- had lunch at Twin Peaks once with Mer & Mum & Grammy &Aunt Margaret, another time just with Grams and Mum. Yum, milkshakes!
Also been doing some more of my favorite activity back home -- hiking. Mum & I went up to Lost Lake the weekend before last, and ended up hiking around the lake. Just going to the dock seemed awfully short after our Surveyor's Ridge excursion. So for once we didn't eat till nearly the end of the hike. It was good hiking weather -- cool but only a bit of sun unfortunately. We saw an adorable cabin up on the side of the lake, and I thought it would be great fun to rent a little cabin or go camping w/ Andrew. Mom tried to explain the difference between hemlocks and cedars -- I realized I don't really know my tree/ bird/ plant identifications very well. Afterwards, we went to Wahtum Lake (excuse to eat dessert out of doors). I took the Wahtum Express trail up and down, a.k.a. 250 steps that bring you into or out of the deep valley that is the lake bed.
One evening after Mer got home from work, we decided to bring Bosun up to Laurance Lake for an excursion. He has to be lifted into and out of the trunk of the jeep, because he's so old and, well, a basset hound. I really wanted to go swimming even though it was chilly... so I finally got up the guts to take like two strokes out, and then come back to shore =) In the tradition of our family's obsession with eating (esp. when out of doors), me and Mer then ate Luna bars (Bosun likes Lemon Zest).
This past weekend was pretty packed, as Mer and I were Domino sitting for our high school teacher, Mrs. J. Domino is a pitbull/ cattle dog mix, so he's a TAD crazy. But he's gotten better with age, and he's so intelligent that you can practically train him to respond to you in the space of an extended weekend. Tried to teach him "down" and the difference between licking and biting! Friday night me and Mer escaped & watched Something's Gotta Give, and didn't get home till 1 am (we didn't check the length of the movie before starting it). Sat. was lots of fun -- I had convinced Mer to see Land of the Dead with me, so we headed into Hood River for a matinee. The guy who let us in told us he frankly thought neither of us was old enough to get in to an R rated movie. I was thinking... sure I look young, but not THAT young!
The movie was great -- sometimes heavy handed w/ the politics (like the line "we don't negotiate with terrorists" and using the word "jihad" as if it were everyday street slang), but lots of good zombie scenes and definitely scary. Mer also appreciated that it was more than just a horror movie. And although I didn't TOTALLY buy the "let's make the zombies more human than the humans" idea, I was starting to sympathize a tad bit with the head zombie who got mad when people killed his fellow zombies just for the hell of it. But come on, if the zombies were relaly "just looking for a place to go," they needn't invade the city and eat tons of people. That's just uncalled for. Can't wait for the unrated version though, you could tell the scenes that were being held back...
I hadn't exactly gotten an appetite while watching the movie, but we still went for dinner at the Crazy Pepper. Yums.
In the evening we continued the horror trend w/ Young Frankenstein (Mom actually stayed awake!!)
Sunday was chilly, but we hiked anyways after a quick visit with Uncle Scott and Ardyth. Went up to Wahtum Lake again, to Anthill Trail. Great views to the east and of the lake... lots of uphill at first (I was feeling rather out of shape). Then we joined up with an old road that took us back to the top of the lake. Interesting, we finally know where that closed off road goes! Strange sustained whistling bird call that we couldn't place, seemed to follow us... It started raining, so we tailgated in the jeep for our picnic. Because we can't go on a hike without eating, obviously!
In the evening we watched The Life Aquatic, which I liked more and more as it went on. Mer also enjoyed it... we loved that all the creatures seemed to be machines, so random!
Today was pretty horrible weather... I had some stuff to do, which included stressing about where to get these certain eyeglass frames that I want. I keep getting these loan consolidation forms even though I've consolidated, supposedly, with the company that's sending them. So I finally called up, and had to wait 5 minutes on hold for the guy to flirt with me. I was asking what my status was, and he said "you're fine -- I bet you hear that from all the guys." And then he called me sweetie or something. I told Mer about that one, and we had a good laugh.
This evening we took another short hike/ walk up at the irrigation trail by Settler's Pond. We saw two deer by the water (Mer saw one more that we missed on the trail). Unfortunately we didn't catch a glimpse of a bear, though we did see its droppings... Heard another bird call we couldn't place, a strange looping repeated trill.
Hmm I guess that's the highlights, I haven't been very good at keeping track of everything!
Hmmmm... Well, I've been doing a lot of scrapbooking w/ Grammy, which is an effective way of recovering and sorting memories... So I've been spending more time down in Hood River -- had lunch at Twin Peaks once with Mer & Mum & Grammy &Aunt Margaret, another time just with Grams and Mum. Yum, milkshakes!
Also been doing some more of my favorite activity back home -- hiking. Mum & I went up to Lost Lake the weekend before last, and ended up hiking around the lake. Just going to the dock seemed awfully short after our Surveyor's Ridge excursion. So for once we didn't eat till nearly the end of the hike. It was good hiking weather -- cool but only a bit of sun unfortunately. We saw an adorable cabin up on the side of the lake, and I thought it would be great fun to rent a little cabin or go camping w/ Andrew. Mom tried to explain the difference between hemlocks and cedars -- I realized I don't really know my tree/ bird/ plant identifications very well. Afterwards, we went to Wahtum Lake (excuse to eat dessert out of doors). I took the Wahtum Express trail up and down, a.k.a. 250 steps that bring you into or out of the deep valley that is the lake bed.
One evening after Mer got home from work, we decided to bring Bosun up to Laurance Lake for an excursion. He has to be lifted into and out of the trunk of the jeep, because he's so old and, well, a basset hound. I really wanted to go swimming even though it was chilly... so I finally got up the guts to take like two strokes out, and then come back to shore =) In the tradition of our family's obsession with eating (esp. when out of doors), me and Mer then ate Luna bars (Bosun likes Lemon Zest).
This past weekend was pretty packed, as Mer and I were Domino sitting for our high school teacher, Mrs. J. Domino is a pitbull/ cattle dog mix, so he's a TAD crazy. But he's gotten better with age, and he's so intelligent that you can practically train him to respond to you in the space of an extended weekend. Tried to teach him "down" and the difference between licking and biting! Friday night me and Mer escaped & watched Something's Gotta Give, and didn't get home till 1 am (we didn't check the length of the movie before starting it). Sat. was lots of fun -- I had convinced Mer to see Land of the Dead with me, so we headed into Hood River for a matinee. The guy who let us in told us he frankly thought neither of us was old enough to get in to an R rated movie. I was thinking... sure I look young, but not THAT young!
The movie was great -- sometimes heavy handed w/ the politics (like the line "we don't negotiate with terrorists" and using the word "jihad" as if it were everyday street slang), but lots of good zombie scenes and definitely scary. Mer also appreciated that it was more than just a horror movie. And although I didn't TOTALLY buy the "let's make the zombies more human than the humans" idea, I was starting to sympathize a tad bit with the head zombie who got mad when people killed his fellow zombies just for the hell of it. But come on, if the zombies were relaly "just looking for a place to go," they needn't invade the city and eat tons of people. That's just uncalled for. Can't wait for the unrated version though, you could tell the scenes that were being held back...
I hadn't exactly gotten an appetite while watching the movie, but we still went for dinner at the Crazy Pepper. Yums.
In the evening we continued the horror trend w/ Young Frankenstein (Mom actually stayed awake!!)
Sunday was chilly, but we hiked anyways after a quick visit with Uncle Scott and Ardyth. Went up to Wahtum Lake again, to Anthill Trail. Great views to the east and of the lake... lots of uphill at first (I was feeling rather out of shape). Then we joined up with an old road that took us back to the top of the lake. Interesting, we finally know where that closed off road goes! Strange sustained whistling bird call that we couldn't place, seemed to follow us... It started raining, so we tailgated in the jeep for our picnic. Because we can't go on a hike without eating, obviously!
In the evening we watched The Life Aquatic, which I liked more and more as it went on. Mer also enjoyed it... we loved that all the creatures seemed to be machines, so random!
Today was pretty horrible weather... I had some stuff to do, which included stressing about where to get these certain eyeglass frames that I want. I keep getting these loan consolidation forms even though I've consolidated, supposedly, with the company that's sending them. So I finally called up, and had to wait 5 minutes on hold for the guy to flirt with me. I was asking what my status was, and he said "you're fine -- I bet you hear that from all the guys." And then he called me sweetie or something. I told Mer about that one, and we had a good laugh.
This evening we took another short hike/ walk up at the irrigation trail by Settler's Pond. We saw two deer by the water (Mer saw one more that we missed on the trail). Unfortunately we didn't catch a glimpse of a bear, though we did see its droppings... Heard another bird call we couldn't place, a strange looping repeated trill.
Hmm I guess that's the highlights, I haven't been very good at keeping track of everything!
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
OK so it's definitely time for a I'm-home-in-Oregon update!
I had a completely uneventful plane ride -- which is not the norm -- so uneventful, in fact, that all I remember is the really nasty food they served us. I sat by this older, talkative man on the short ride from Seattle to Portland -- he must have been in his 80's, and very big on traveling... Noteworthy: our stewardess had been on the Millionaire show, and we were allowed free beer or wine. Cool, except I opted out of that, considering the upcoming tooth surgery.
Being home was cool -- I had a couple of days of leisure time with Mum & Tim. Took Bosun on a couple of walks, which isn't as easy as it sounds. He walks at an astoundingly slow pace, and I like to walk briskly, so we don't get along.
Anyway, the big event was Thurs. morning -- I tried to stay awake as long as possible after the sedative, but... it did its job. Yuck. The upper wisdom teeth had at least partially come in, but the bottoms required some digging apparently. They stitched me up, and I was eating mush for a week. Lots of ice cream & applesauce. I'm so tired of soup, especially soup that's been shredded up in a blender. Yuck. Anyway, nearly two weeks later and I'm pretty much painfree -- just some shifting in the lower teeth I think, and I still have to irrigate the places where teeth used to be. Eww.
Anyway, to distract myself I recently started scrapbooking with Grammy. She had hopes that all four of her daughters would make scrapbooks, but that hasn't panned out. So now I'm learning to use the special oval stencils & picture rounders -- fun times. I haven't actually pasted anything down yet... I still need to print more pictures, too.
Last Weds we drove to Corvallis to get Merrie. Packed her room into the jeep, experienced subpar leftovers for dinner at the co op, and then filled up on yummy chocolate hazelnut gelato. YUM.
I've been rather lax about writing W2K articles... averaging about two a week. Tim has me putting some stuff on ebay for him. And I will be doing some odd jobs for neighbors & friends. Not terribly worried about money though, as I'm sure I'll stay underbudget at Stanford. The only thing I can see myself realistically overspending on is food... ahh Ben & Jerry's! And I'm planning to do the whole organic/ free range chicken/ health nut thing. Better late than never!
A top concern right now is decorating my studio for next year. I went shopping via JcPenney's catalog, and ended up with a super girly floral & lace comforter. And my bathroom is going to be all pink/ peach/ red. I figured I may as well do what I want now, since I can't imagine Andrew, or any guy for that matter (straight guy, I should say) wanting to live around lace, flowers, and pink. Hmmm. I figured I'd do the cheapskate thing, so I went to the senior center rummage sale over the weekend and got some cool miss matched silverware. A lot of it is just tarnished because it's real silver... and I kinda like the shabby chic sort of look. Something about vintage patterns...
Anyway, on Saturday we also went to a yard sale. The woman running it revealed, in chatting to us, that she was from Holyoke, MA. And that she then moved to the Bay area, and is now living in Hood River. Strange coincidences. And her daughter went to another all women's college. Do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do DO (Twilight Zone). Best part: I got a little hand held vacuum for $2.
Hmmm... what else. I've been cooking more lately... made mango fried rice, pad thai, meat loaf, spaghetti, brownies, and now tonight, by popular demand, more pad thai. And then probably some chocolate chip cookies. (Mmm, dough).
Sunday was a cool but sunny day, so we went hiking. We went up Surveyor's Ridge and down Oak Grove trail... very pretty. Lots of views of meadows, forest, and, of course, the mountain. Kinda weird trying to irrigate my gum holes after eating, while on the trail. I packed warm salt water in a thermos, and brought my syringe. And of course some biker came by while I was trying to do what the oral surgeon ordered. Errr... how long does it take for my mouth to fill in the gaps with gum tissue? Egads. Anyway, my thighs are still sore -- all that downhill hiking... I try to put more of the burden on my muscles instead of the poor knees, and then... things hurt.
Last night Mer & I met up with her friends at taco night. We're kinda over the whole taco thing, so we just had root beer. Topic of conversation: Jumping off docks, Be Bop Cowboy (or something), and drinking. Hmmm.
In exciting news in my life: George Romero is coming out with a new zombie movie -- opens June 24th. I hope it's good. It's supposed to be, like all his other zombie movies, more than just horror... He says it'll be incorporating class conflict (the upper class human survivors that live in skyscrapers, vs. the working class survivors who do all the dirty work and actually deal with the zombies), and have a pretty pertinent and timely reference to the situation in Iraq. Kinda eerily similar (I guess they don't call them horror movies for nothing).
I had a completely uneventful plane ride -- which is not the norm -- so uneventful, in fact, that all I remember is the really nasty food they served us. I sat by this older, talkative man on the short ride from Seattle to Portland -- he must have been in his 80's, and very big on traveling... Noteworthy: our stewardess had been on the Millionaire show, and we were allowed free beer or wine. Cool, except I opted out of that, considering the upcoming tooth surgery.
Being home was cool -- I had a couple of days of leisure time with Mum & Tim. Took Bosun on a couple of walks, which isn't as easy as it sounds. He walks at an astoundingly slow pace, and I like to walk briskly, so we don't get along.
Anyway, the big event was Thurs. morning -- I tried to stay awake as long as possible after the sedative, but... it did its job. Yuck. The upper wisdom teeth had at least partially come in, but the bottoms required some digging apparently. They stitched me up, and I was eating mush for a week. Lots of ice cream & applesauce. I'm so tired of soup, especially soup that's been shredded up in a blender. Yuck. Anyway, nearly two weeks later and I'm pretty much painfree -- just some shifting in the lower teeth I think, and I still have to irrigate the places where teeth used to be. Eww.
Anyway, to distract myself I recently started scrapbooking with Grammy. She had hopes that all four of her daughters would make scrapbooks, but that hasn't panned out. So now I'm learning to use the special oval stencils & picture rounders -- fun times. I haven't actually pasted anything down yet... I still need to print more pictures, too.
Last Weds we drove to Corvallis to get Merrie. Packed her room into the jeep, experienced subpar leftovers for dinner at the co op, and then filled up on yummy chocolate hazelnut gelato. YUM.
I've been rather lax about writing W2K articles... averaging about two a week. Tim has me putting some stuff on ebay for him. And I will be doing some odd jobs for neighbors & friends. Not terribly worried about money though, as I'm sure I'll stay underbudget at Stanford. The only thing I can see myself realistically overspending on is food... ahh Ben & Jerry's! And I'm planning to do the whole organic/ free range chicken/ health nut thing. Better late than never!
A top concern right now is decorating my studio for next year. I went shopping via JcPenney's catalog, and ended up with a super girly floral & lace comforter. And my bathroom is going to be all pink/ peach/ red. I figured I may as well do what I want now, since I can't imagine Andrew, or any guy for that matter (straight guy, I should say) wanting to live around lace, flowers, and pink. Hmmm. I figured I'd do the cheapskate thing, so I went to the senior center rummage sale over the weekend and got some cool miss matched silverware. A lot of it is just tarnished because it's real silver... and I kinda like the shabby chic sort of look. Something about vintage patterns...
Anyway, on Saturday we also went to a yard sale. The woman running it revealed, in chatting to us, that she was from Holyoke, MA. And that she then moved to the Bay area, and is now living in Hood River. Strange coincidences. And her daughter went to another all women's college. Do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do DO (Twilight Zone). Best part: I got a little hand held vacuum for $2.
Hmmm... what else. I've been cooking more lately... made mango fried rice, pad thai, meat loaf, spaghetti, brownies, and now tonight, by popular demand, more pad thai. And then probably some chocolate chip cookies. (Mmm, dough).
Sunday was a cool but sunny day, so we went hiking. We went up Surveyor's Ridge and down Oak Grove trail... very pretty. Lots of views of meadows, forest, and, of course, the mountain. Kinda weird trying to irrigate my gum holes after eating, while on the trail. I packed warm salt water in a thermos, and brought my syringe. And of course some biker came by while I was trying to do what the oral surgeon ordered. Errr... how long does it take for my mouth to fill in the gaps with gum tissue? Egads. Anyway, my thighs are still sore -- all that downhill hiking... I try to put more of the burden on my muscles instead of the poor knees, and then... things hurt.
Last night Mer & I met up with her friends at taco night. We're kinda over the whole taco thing, so we just had root beer. Topic of conversation: Jumping off docks, Be Bop Cowboy (or something), and drinking. Hmmm.
In exciting news in my life: George Romero is coming out with a new zombie movie -- opens June 24th. I hope it's good. It's supposed to be, like all his other zombie movies, more than just horror... He says it'll be incorporating class conflict (the upper class human survivors that live in skyscrapers, vs. the working class survivors who do all the dirty work and actually deal with the zombies), and have a pretty pertinent and timely reference to the situation in Iraq. Kinda eerily similar (I guess they don't call them horror movies for nothing).
Friday, May 27, 2005
Ok definitely need an update!
Last Thurs: This was the first day we kind of needed to be back at MHC... Things were actually planned for us. In the morning, I went with Alex to Laura's brunch get together. We had a little trouble finding the bed and breakfast, but all was well once we got there. And the mimosa definitely helped relieve the symptoms of a cold or allergies (couldn't figure it out). I decided to drop the canoe sing activity, since I didn't want to be totally overbooked. So I went home and slept... Then got ready for the senior bbq in the backyard of the president's house. It was a beautiful day... we sat at a patio table, and then moved into the sun for dessert. Beer & ice cream... don't really go together. Loved hanging out with my neighbors & friends again -- as time was winding down, I was getting progressively sadder about leaving MHC.
Afterwards, I hung out with Karuna & Susan until Final Lecture... which was entertaining, although the first speaker had a serious speech for us, that didn't mesh with the latter two, or the purpose of the event. Luckily it didn't last much beyond a half hour, because I had to rush home to see the season finale of the OC! (Which was awesome!) Jen came down with wine and we drank and yelled at the tv. Jen was ready to leave with all the violence.
I was planning on hanging out with Mom and Tim in the evening, but they have the same bad luck with airplanes as I do. True to form, the airlines screwed up and had delays at both PDX & Chicago. They really can't get their s*#! together. But it turned out to be for the best, as I went with Karuna & Susan to D Becky's wine & cheese party. The bunny was in good form, and I got some funny pictures. We ate... and drank... and watched ER. Got to bed rather late, but tried not to worry too much!
Friday morning was a long ass graduation rehearsal. First of all, I couldn't figure out why they had people speaking to us (some from the CDC). It seemed to be a time filler while we completed surveys on our experience at MHC and our future plans. I didn't appreciate my time being wasted when I wanted to sleep and rest up for a very busy day. Then, they had every single person who wasn't happy with how their name was announced stand in ONE LINE and correct the prof. reading. Which is fine -- if they want to wait in a line instead of filling out the form given to us way back in Sept, that should be their waste of time. But to make ALL OF US wait, when they could have just done the corrections at the conclusion of the rehearsal after letting the rest of us GO (who either have easy to pronounce names, or sent in the form as asked), was frankly inconsiderate and ridiculous. Kathleen and I were literally lying down trying to fall asleep on the small carpeted area of the field house. Argh! Even I filled out a form, and my name is ridiculously common in this country.
Luckily, Mom and Tim didn't head over to MHC right away that morning. I grabbed lunch at Blanchard (amidst confused alums), and headed up to the Delles. I went toward the front of the building, thinking that perhaps I'd intercept Mom and Tim somehow. Lo and behold, there they were, chatting with other parents, right in front of the Delles! So I showed them around, we took a walk all over campus & ate, went through the million dollar garden & looked at bullfrogs in the smaller pond, walked toward upper lake, and then decided to go to Amherst in the later afternoon.
First, though, Tim had some unfinished business to attend to -- he decided to arrange with FM to make a sign with the MHC stencil on it. Amazingly, in the time it took Mom and I to do some errands, Tim had gotten this sign made. It'll look cool later, I'm thinking in my stable with two horses... =) Afterwards, we got food and ate on the Amherst green. It was getting a tad chilly... we headed back to MHC.
In the evening, Andrew got there just in time to walk with us over to Abbey Chapel. It was great. They played Havah Nagilah, and Karuna had a beautiful solo! Mom & Tim decided to go back to the hotel, and Andrew & I stayed in.
Saturday was busy, busy... Bright and early, we headed over to Abbey/ Buck in our white for the laurel parade. I really wanted to carry the laurel, which nearly backfired later on when alums were yelling at me to catch up before the laurel broke! But before that, we had like 40 minutes of sitting there in the cold. Luckily Mum bought me a white cardigan, so I wasn't totally freezing. I stepped on a worm, which scared me because I didn't notice till I'd basically cut it in two. We finally started, marching with the other alums, and then marching between them to the grave. They had lots of great signs, and everyone was in their class colors. We did our weaving around the grave, getting a bit unwielding in formation, and then sang a rather disjointed version of Bread and Roses. Difficult to find people afterwards!!
I finally turned in my thesis to the English Dept., changed clothes, and went to the alum meeting in the amphitheater, which was scorching in the sun. Then we had the community picnic, which was decent... drank wine... sat kind of lazily for the Phi Beta Kappa induction... ran back in the now drizzling weather to put away the certificate, then suddenly the sun was out again, and hurried over the English dept. at home. Yummy carrot cake =) Very cool introducing Mum & Tim to Corinne & Quillian and everyone... Hugged Bev, talked with Laura... ahh such fun! Then I think Mom and Tim were ready to go (Prof. A. was later wondering where they were)... after Corinne had them reading my thesis!! Ack. I walked back to the dorm with Andrew & Laura.
Dinner was the Under the Stars theme, under the huge tent on Skinner Green. We sat with Laura and Kathleen, both of whom my mother LOVED. She said they both had elements of a girlfriend she had way back when. I had lots of chocolate mousse, and it soon became apparent that I have no table manners =) Then, in the drizzle, we had the baccheloreate ceremony. Emily C. had a speech, JoJo, a chaplain, Profs. Renda & Chen (I think?)... and singing... and then it was suddenly over. Rather strangely spiritual sending off. Standing out gathering everyone up, Korisha's mother (who is incredibly cool, I fell in love with her in the like combined 15 minutes I was around her) was about ready to bring me back with them. Had a little encounter with a public safety officer, who was offering to see her home or something... odd! But the evening wasn't over... Andrew and I caught the very end of the canoe sing (unfortuately we didn't get there till late because we were getting ready to be out at the party). Then we wandered around... and I wished we had gotten right to the canoe sing and THEN gotten ready, instead of missing so much of it. Eventually perked up again with some beer at the party. Ran into Karuna & Susan & Jen & Janet (and her brother!) & Andrew's friends. Merry was about ready to keep me partying till 4 am. Luckily she let me go! =)
Sunday morning, tired and sleepy, I was off after a quick breakfast to line up for commencement. It was inside, unfortunately. Lots of marching to bagpipes and running to catch up in line and sitting. Nina Totenberg's speech was OK, except for the "girls' school" slip up. Claudia's speech was awesome though! Walking across the stage was strangely anticlimatic. I think my exact thoughts were "step step OK shake, get the paper packet, don't fall down, get going, down the stairs, should I pause here for pictures?" Yeah not so exciting. Afterwards, I had a teary goodbye with Corinne, and hung out with Beth, Korisha, and Liz. Ahh... sadness. Leaving is so sad =(
After the reception (yum cheesecake and fudge), Mom and Tim went to Brinfield antiquing, while Andrew and I packed up my room. We dropped stuff off at Salvation Army, ate one last time at Osaka, got ice cream to go from Herrell's, got cake & cookies for Mum and Tim, & got coffee from Rao's for Andrew (that along with the fudge sauce from Herrell's was his taste of the valley birthday present... wish I had thought of that earlier!) Back at the Delles, Mum & Tim had dessert and I finished up packing. They left to sleep (before their trips to Mystic & Newport the next day) while Andrew and I got everything together, had a last fun conversation with Claudia, Karuna, and Craig, and then drove back to Boston. We got in around 1 am... Luckily Andrew slept in the next day and just went to work late. I was so tired I started falling down in the shower... staying up till 3 am after a busy commencement weekend is so not a good idea!
Monday I just slept, basically. And watched TV. And went food shopping. Yum mango fried rice! Same with Tuesday. I watched movies... some Young Frankenstein, Snake Pit, Dolores Claiborne, Princess Bride, etc. Weds. I went to work at W2K... loved seeing everyone! But the office was FREEZING. The management CLEVERLY turned off the heating system on May 15th, and even in light of record setting low "highs" in the 40's, couldn't be bothered to turn it back on. Or even to turn off the autopilot AC, for that matter. Warmed up with buffalo chicken for dinner!
Thurs. I went in to work again, this time armed with three sweaters and a blanket. No joke. People were seriously walking around with blankets wrapped around them. Arggghh! Oh I finally experienced the cafe food a bit. Usually I avoid that. But the chocolate cookies are oh so yummy. Kinda sad to leave the office for the last time. I spent so much time there last summer... Said goodbye's to the other interns & Charlene. On the way home, we picked out Andrew's glasses... And then had our last dinner at 9 Tastes. More mango fried rice! Last night we also watched Kinsey, which was good, but not as good as I'd hoped.
Today I've just been watching TV & packing for my flight tomorrow... so nice to just relax finally!
Last Thurs: This was the first day we kind of needed to be back at MHC... Things were actually planned for us. In the morning, I went with Alex to Laura's brunch get together. We had a little trouble finding the bed and breakfast, but all was well once we got there. And the mimosa definitely helped relieve the symptoms of a cold or allergies (couldn't figure it out). I decided to drop the canoe sing activity, since I didn't want to be totally overbooked. So I went home and slept... Then got ready for the senior bbq in the backyard of the president's house. It was a beautiful day... we sat at a patio table, and then moved into the sun for dessert. Beer & ice cream... don't really go together. Loved hanging out with my neighbors & friends again -- as time was winding down, I was getting progressively sadder about leaving MHC.
Afterwards, I hung out with Karuna & Susan until Final Lecture... which was entertaining, although the first speaker had a serious speech for us, that didn't mesh with the latter two, or the purpose of the event. Luckily it didn't last much beyond a half hour, because I had to rush home to see the season finale of the OC! (Which was awesome!) Jen came down with wine and we drank and yelled at the tv. Jen was ready to leave with all the violence.
I was planning on hanging out with Mom and Tim in the evening, but they have the same bad luck with airplanes as I do. True to form, the airlines screwed up and had delays at both PDX & Chicago. They really can't get their s*#! together. But it turned out to be for the best, as I went with Karuna & Susan to D Becky's wine & cheese party. The bunny was in good form, and I got some funny pictures. We ate... and drank... and watched ER. Got to bed rather late, but tried not to worry too much!
Friday morning was a long ass graduation rehearsal. First of all, I couldn't figure out why they had people speaking to us (some from the CDC). It seemed to be a time filler while we completed surveys on our experience at MHC and our future plans. I didn't appreciate my time being wasted when I wanted to sleep and rest up for a very busy day. Then, they had every single person who wasn't happy with how their name was announced stand in ONE LINE and correct the prof. reading. Which is fine -- if they want to wait in a line instead of filling out the form given to us way back in Sept, that should be their waste of time. But to make ALL OF US wait, when they could have just done the corrections at the conclusion of the rehearsal after letting the rest of us GO (who either have easy to pronounce names, or sent in the form as asked), was frankly inconsiderate and ridiculous. Kathleen and I were literally lying down trying to fall asleep on the small carpeted area of the field house. Argh! Even I filled out a form, and my name is ridiculously common in this country.
Luckily, Mom and Tim didn't head over to MHC right away that morning. I grabbed lunch at Blanchard (amidst confused alums), and headed up to the Delles. I went toward the front of the building, thinking that perhaps I'd intercept Mom and Tim somehow. Lo and behold, there they were, chatting with other parents, right in front of the Delles! So I showed them around, we took a walk all over campus & ate, went through the million dollar garden & looked at bullfrogs in the smaller pond, walked toward upper lake, and then decided to go to Amherst in the later afternoon.
First, though, Tim had some unfinished business to attend to -- he decided to arrange with FM to make a sign with the MHC stencil on it. Amazingly, in the time it took Mom and I to do some errands, Tim had gotten this sign made. It'll look cool later, I'm thinking in my stable with two horses... =) Afterwards, we got food and ate on the Amherst green. It was getting a tad chilly... we headed back to MHC.
In the evening, Andrew got there just in time to walk with us over to Abbey Chapel. It was great. They played Havah Nagilah, and Karuna had a beautiful solo! Mom & Tim decided to go back to the hotel, and Andrew & I stayed in.
Saturday was busy, busy... Bright and early, we headed over to Abbey/ Buck in our white for the laurel parade. I really wanted to carry the laurel, which nearly backfired later on when alums were yelling at me to catch up before the laurel broke! But before that, we had like 40 minutes of sitting there in the cold. Luckily Mum bought me a white cardigan, so I wasn't totally freezing. I stepped on a worm, which scared me because I didn't notice till I'd basically cut it in two. We finally started, marching with the other alums, and then marching between them to the grave. They had lots of great signs, and everyone was in their class colors. We did our weaving around the grave, getting a bit unwielding in formation, and then sang a rather disjointed version of Bread and Roses. Difficult to find people afterwards!!
I finally turned in my thesis to the English Dept., changed clothes, and went to the alum meeting in the amphitheater, which was scorching in the sun. Then we had the community picnic, which was decent... drank wine... sat kind of lazily for the Phi Beta Kappa induction... ran back in the now drizzling weather to put away the certificate, then suddenly the sun was out again, and hurried over the English dept. at home. Yummy carrot cake =) Very cool introducing Mum & Tim to Corinne & Quillian and everyone... Hugged Bev, talked with Laura... ahh such fun! Then I think Mom and Tim were ready to go (Prof. A. was later wondering where they were)... after Corinne had them reading my thesis!! Ack. I walked back to the dorm with Andrew & Laura.
Dinner was the Under the Stars theme, under the huge tent on Skinner Green. We sat with Laura and Kathleen, both of whom my mother LOVED. She said they both had elements of a girlfriend she had way back when. I had lots of chocolate mousse, and it soon became apparent that I have no table manners =) Then, in the drizzle, we had the baccheloreate ceremony. Emily C. had a speech, JoJo, a chaplain, Profs. Renda & Chen (I think?)... and singing... and then it was suddenly over. Rather strangely spiritual sending off. Standing out gathering everyone up, Korisha's mother (who is incredibly cool, I fell in love with her in the like combined 15 minutes I was around her) was about ready to bring me back with them. Had a little encounter with a public safety officer, who was offering to see her home or something... odd! But the evening wasn't over... Andrew and I caught the very end of the canoe sing (unfortuately we didn't get there till late because we were getting ready to be out at the party). Then we wandered around... and I wished we had gotten right to the canoe sing and THEN gotten ready, instead of missing so much of it. Eventually perked up again with some beer at the party. Ran into Karuna & Susan & Jen & Janet (and her brother!) & Andrew's friends. Merry was about ready to keep me partying till 4 am. Luckily she let me go! =)
Sunday morning, tired and sleepy, I was off after a quick breakfast to line up for commencement. It was inside, unfortunately. Lots of marching to bagpipes and running to catch up in line and sitting. Nina Totenberg's speech was OK, except for the "girls' school" slip up. Claudia's speech was awesome though! Walking across the stage was strangely anticlimatic. I think my exact thoughts were "step step OK shake, get the paper packet, don't fall down, get going, down the stairs, should I pause here for pictures?" Yeah not so exciting. Afterwards, I had a teary goodbye with Corinne, and hung out with Beth, Korisha, and Liz. Ahh... sadness. Leaving is so sad =(
After the reception (yum cheesecake and fudge), Mom and Tim went to Brinfield antiquing, while Andrew and I packed up my room. We dropped stuff off at Salvation Army, ate one last time at Osaka, got ice cream to go from Herrell's, got cake & cookies for Mum and Tim, & got coffee from Rao's for Andrew (that along with the fudge sauce from Herrell's was his taste of the valley birthday present... wish I had thought of that earlier!) Back at the Delles, Mum & Tim had dessert and I finished up packing. They left to sleep (before their trips to Mystic & Newport the next day) while Andrew and I got everything together, had a last fun conversation with Claudia, Karuna, and Craig, and then drove back to Boston. We got in around 1 am... Luckily Andrew slept in the next day and just went to work late. I was so tired I started falling down in the shower... staying up till 3 am after a busy commencement weekend is so not a good idea!
Monday I just slept, basically. And watched TV. And went food shopping. Yum mango fried rice! Same with Tuesday. I watched movies... some Young Frankenstein, Snake Pit, Dolores Claiborne, Princess Bride, etc. Weds. I went to work at W2K... loved seeing everyone! But the office was FREEZING. The management CLEVERLY turned off the heating system on May 15th, and even in light of record setting low "highs" in the 40's, couldn't be bothered to turn it back on. Or even to turn off the autopilot AC, for that matter. Warmed up with buffalo chicken for dinner!
Thurs. I went in to work again, this time armed with three sweaters and a blanket. No joke. People were seriously walking around with blankets wrapped around them. Arggghh! Oh I finally experienced the cafe food a bit. Usually I avoid that. But the chocolate cookies are oh so yummy. Kinda sad to leave the office for the last time. I spent so much time there last summer... Said goodbye's to the other interns & Charlene. On the way home, we picked out Andrew's glasses... And then had our last dinner at 9 Tastes. More mango fried rice! Last night we also watched Kinsey, which was good, but not as good as I'd hoped.
Today I've just been watching TV & packing for my flight tomorrow... so nice to just relax finally!
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
I'm at work so this will be quite brief. It's FREEZING in here. I've got long socks on, slacks, and three layers -- cotton shirt, wool cardigan, Andrew's fleece -- and I'm STILL COLD!! My fingers get ice cold typing. Today's "high" (in the mid forties) is a record setting low for the Boston area. And it's raining like hell and windy outside. Great, huh? And, the management of the office buildings cleverly decided to turn off the heat back on May 15th -- in other words, it is now impossible to get the heat on. So we're all shivering, and wondering how they get away with charging rent for this office space. People are literally walking around in blankets. No joke.
Anyway, just had to copy Andrew's IM, because he's slowly going crazy with the computer science textbook writing:
ANDPEW: oh so cheryl and i came up with a great movie idea
ANDPEW: it's about a disgruntled textbook writer who uses his collection of big ass books to store tools (a la Shawshank Redemption) and slowly bores his way through his cubicle
Pink Poodledog: hahahah
ANDPEW: only to find himself in the middle of the river outside
ANDPEW: then he gets sucked into the old mill, which unknowingly is still active
Pink Poodledog: oh lord
Pink Poodledog: you guys got pretty far along on the plot development
ANDPEW: it was actually all my idea
ANDPEW: well cheryl suggested emerging into the water like in the movie
ANDPEW: well when we went out to lunch some people from across the hall were wondering what we do, so we explained
ANDPEW: but then we were thinking it'd be fun to make up a story about how the books are really just a front
ANDPEW: and that they're so big so we can store all sorts of cool stuff in the cut-out insides
Pink Poodledog: hahaha
Pink Poodledog: you guys are crazy. over here we're more normal, because we don't do technical writing =)
ANDPEW: haha
Anyway, just had to copy Andrew's IM, because he's slowly going crazy with the computer science textbook writing:
ANDPEW: oh so cheryl and i came up with a great movie idea
ANDPEW: it's about a disgruntled textbook writer who uses his collection of big ass books to store tools (a la Shawshank Redemption) and slowly bores his way through his cubicle
Pink Poodledog: hahahah
ANDPEW: only to find himself in the middle of the river outside
ANDPEW: then he gets sucked into the old mill, which unknowingly is still active
Pink Poodledog: oh lord
Pink Poodledog: you guys got pretty far along on the plot development
ANDPEW: it was actually all my idea
ANDPEW: well cheryl suggested emerging into the water like in the movie
ANDPEW: well when we went out to lunch some people from across the hall were wondering what we do, so we explained
ANDPEW: but then we were thinking it'd be fun to make up a story about how the books are really just a front
ANDPEW: and that they're so big so we can store all sorts of cool stuff in the cut-out insides
Pink Poodledog: hahaha
Pink Poodledog: you guys are crazy. over here we're more normal, because we don't do technical writing =)
ANDPEW: haha
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
ANDPEW: haha, you're so cute. i can tell you've finally realized you're actually done with college :-)
Auto response from Pink Poodledog: watching my newest addiction: america's next top model. yes, it's come down to this... I'm so starved for mindless tv that I've taken to watching animal cops and america's next top model.
Pink Poodledog: hahahah
Auto response from Pink Poodledog: watching my newest addiction: america's next top model. yes, it's come down to this... I'm so starved for mindless tv that I've taken to watching animal cops and america's next top model.
Pink Poodledog: hahahah
Wow wow I'm really done!
Yesterday was my last day in Boston; Andrew, conveniently, wasn't feeling well enough to go to work. Lots of sleep. I'm still making up for the last year, I think. Sat in the sun reading, messing around on the computer, and napping, while Andrew got some work done. In the evening we began the arduous task of finding new glasses for Andrew. The problem with this: Andrew wants glasses that will define and reveal his innermost character. Judging from our hour in the eyeglass office, this is a tough order to fill.
Dinner was amazing... and a great reminder of why Blanchard food is disgusting... We made sushi -- some CA rolls, and some inventions using mango. Perfectly ripe mango & avocado... heaven on a cutting board.
This morning we had our last ever early morning car ride to the Boston bus station. Got there in plenty of time -- I actually fell asleep twice on the bus, too. MHC was beautiful today (it's sneaky like that, getting prettier before you leave). I got my thesis corrections & handed in the final copy to the library. Andrew led me through the PDF-cation of my thesis, with no snags. Dropped by the English Dept... cleaned up my room to Jen's MMMBop next door... had dinner with my neighbors, Claudia, Nora, Erin, Joanna, and friends =) Topics included: secret handshakes, personal pizzas, and to what extent Blockbuster is the puppy mill of the video world. Then I finally returned Marx to his proper home.
America's Next Top Model -- it wasn't the small town girl from the midwest that I was rooting for, but the winner is equally cool, I've decided. I guess now there's nothing left to do but continue packing... ick.
Yesterday was my last day in Boston; Andrew, conveniently, wasn't feeling well enough to go to work. Lots of sleep. I'm still making up for the last year, I think. Sat in the sun reading, messing around on the computer, and napping, while Andrew got some work done. In the evening we began the arduous task of finding new glasses for Andrew. The problem with this: Andrew wants glasses that will define and reveal his innermost character. Judging from our hour in the eyeglass office, this is a tough order to fill.
Dinner was amazing... and a great reminder of why Blanchard food is disgusting... We made sushi -- some CA rolls, and some inventions using mango. Perfectly ripe mango & avocado... heaven on a cutting board.
This morning we had our last ever early morning car ride to the Boston bus station. Got there in plenty of time -- I actually fell asleep twice on the bus, too. MHC was beautiful today (it's sneaky like that, getting prettier before you leave). I got my thesis corrections & handed in the final copy to the library. Andrew led me through the PDF-cation of my thesis, with no snags. Dropped by the English Dept... cleaned up my room to Jen's MMMBop next door... had dinner with my neighbors, Claudia, Nora, Erin, Joanna, and friends =) Topics included: secret handshakes, personal pizzas, and to what extent Blockbuster is the puppy mill of the video world. Then I finally returned Marx to his proper home.
America's Next Top Model -- it wasn't the small town girl from the midwest that I was rooting for, but the winner is equally cool, I've decided. I guess now there's nothing left to do but continue packing... ick.
Monday, May 16, 2005
I'm now in Boston for senior week -- catching up on sleep!
Tuesday: I was nervous about the English Dept presentation on my thesis, and talked to Anna for awhile to procrastinate. I helped Maryanne set up a bit to distract myself, and arranged the room in a small, intimate circle. My hopes for a small & informal talk were dashed when the circle widened and widened to eventually include the entire Cassani Room. When Prof. Hill yelled at Azeen to speak up, and she had to stand up to be heard, I knew that we had definitely crossed the line from cozy talk to formal presentation. Of course, I had to go last, because of my last name. Damn it, why didn't I take Duckwall instead of Richardson? Then I could have been 2nd or 3rd from last... argh. Anyway, I got through it, and read the first couple pages of a short story that doesn't include dialogue till the third page (I can't distinguish by voice the different characters, without sounding as though I'm reading to children). Afterwards I got to talk to everyone, and Sarah & Miranda consoled me with beautiful flowers =)
Afterwards we had our last dinner at Wilder (sadness!) and I started packing stuff up & throwing things out. In the evening I played Trivial Pursuit with Karuna & the gang -- this time I was on Claudia & Kim's team (and of course they won). I was a bit tipsy afterwards... & Karuna & I went to M&C's.
Weds. I barely remember... I know we had a farewell dinner at Prospect (my last night eating in a real dining hall!), and I got lots of pictures with Sarah & Miranda & Ariel! In the evening I stopped by Esther & Jen's get-together to socialize a bit.
Thurs. I had a lovely afternoon sitting out on the grass in the garden by the art museum, writing out cards. It was just warm enough (although a bit windy), and the sun was wonderful. Dinner was awful though... We went to Blanchard and I stupidly ordered the special -- fried rice. It was soaked in soy sauce. I tried to eat some of it because I was hungry and that was my entire dinner swipe. Eventually I gave up, and Sarah tried it to compare it to hers. When she agreed that it was not edible, I complained to the checker & got a sandwich to replace it. Ick!! It's crazy... there's so much sodium in soy sauce, I don't understand why they would soak the rice in it... YUCK.
Friday I finally was motivated to take the bus to Boston -- in part because there was no way I was going to survive Blanchard food for the full week! The ride went smoothly, and I even saw my firstie Zainab for the first leg of the journey. All the elevators were working so I didn't have to drag my wheelie suitcase around, and the trains seemed to show up just as I arrived at the subway line. I took a nap finally when I arrived (sleepy from the lulling bus ride!)... and then we went out for Indian food in Davis Square. I prefer the place in Noho for my favorite masala, but the portions were definitely bigger here... and more in the way of extras (we had some sort of spicy plum sauce that was amazing). We started I heart Huckabees, but promptly fell asleep.
Saturday was a wonderfully lazy day. I slept tons trying to fight off this cold, and then we went out in the evening to Merry's birthday party. We talked to Merry a bit, who is great fun, but then found ourselves talking together and feeling awkward that we weren't mingling more... The problem being, that we both tend toward the wallflower mentality. And it seemed like everyone was already in their groups... And the people willing to strike up conversations with us were a bit, well, hard to get into. First there was a girl from Western Mass. who seemed rather hippie-ish and assured me that I really NEED to go to the Oregon Country Fair. Not just go, but find a vender (back in Oregon we call them carnies) to sneak me in overnight. OK. Maybe it's just me, but I would not feel super safe staying with a carnie overnight at the fair. After that awkward conversation ended, we soon found ourselves talking to a guy that Merry might like the day before. Apparently he's from Moldova. Luckily Andrew had at least heard of this country, because I'm not so good with geography. Once we extricated ourselves from that conversation, I think we were both ready to head out.
The highlight of the evening, though, was Merry's friends singing "Oh Merry" instead of "Oh Sherry." I wish I'd known Merry at MHC -- she's hilarious and so energetic. We're adoping each other for Big/Little Sister, because mine deserted me and she was abroad junior year. Another highlight was the strange coincidence of Dan -- who was also having a birthday. His gf, who he was flying out to see the next day in Seattle, was an intern with Andrew at Microsoft AND went abroad to Amsterdam at the same time with him. Strange.
Sunday was pretty quiet, until Andrew's roommate Mo started in on his Star Wars marathon party. Andrew & I ducked out to Jon & Jen's for dinner on the new grill. We hung out till Desperate Housewives was over (sooo good this week). The party was still going strong back at the apt. It sounded as though the apt. was under attack, with side commentary compliments of Mo. The place was pretty much trashed afterwards, and I finally deigned to turn off the tv at like 5 am after realizing that Mo had, in fact, decided not to bother. This morning I decided I couldn't stand it, and took out half the trash bags & cleaned up the counters & rangetop. The dishes, however, are all Mo's. Those I'm refusing to touch! Further proof why I NEED a studio at Stanford next year, and why I'm never living with any guys except Andrew (who's as OCD as me, and cleaner than any other representrative of the male species that I've ever known). Andrew was equally irate -- and is looking forward to his own place starting this summer that he can keep obsessively clean. I've never seen any guy but him actually PICK UP CRUMBS off the floor immediately after dropping them. In fact, he did it just last night at Jon & Jen's. Wow!
Today I was watching TV and decided that I should really read something instead of vegging to VH1's celebrity moments on tape. So I was looking at this article from the NYT, I think it went out on the 15th, about class in America. It made me feel vindicated in leaning toward Marxist theory and claiming that class is still a valid issue today...
Anyway, now it's time for vegging again!
Tuesday: I was nervous about the English Dept presentation on my thesis, and talked to Anna for awhile to procrastinate. I helped Maryanne set up a bit to distract myself, and arranged the room in a small, intimate circle. My hopes for a small & informal talk were dashed when the circle widened and widened to eventually include the entire Cassani Room. When Prof. Hill yelled at Azeen to speak up, and she had to stand up to be heard, I knew that we had definitely crossed the line from cozy talk to formal presentation. Of course, I had to go last, because of my last name. Damn it, why didn't I take Duckwall instead of Richardson? Then I could have been 2nd or 3rd from last... argh. Anyway, I got through it, and read the first couple pages of a short story that doesn't include dialogue till the third page (I can't distinguish by voice the different characters, without sounding as though I'm reading to children). Afterwards I got to talk to everyone, and Sarah & Miranda consoled me with beautiful flowers =)
Afterwards we had our last dinner at Wilder (sadness!) and I started packing stuff up & throwing things out. In the evening I played Trivial Pursuit with Karuna & the gang -- this time I was on Claudia & Kim's team (and of course they won). I was a bit tipsy afterwards... & Karuna & I went to M&C's.
Weds. I barely remember... I know we had a farewell dinner at Prospect (my last night eating in a real dining hall!), and I got lots of pictures with Sarah & Miranda & Ariel! In the evening I stopped by Esther & Jen's get-together to socialize a bit.
Thurs. I had a lovely afternoon sitting out on the grass in the garden by the art museum, writing out cards. It was just warm enough (although a bit windy), and the sun was wonderful. Dinner was awful though... We went to Blanchard and I stupidly ordered the special -- fried rice. It was soaked in soy sauce. I tried to eat some of it because I was hungry and that was my entire dinner swipe. Eventually I gave up, and Sarah tried it to compare it to hers. When she agreed that it was not edible, I complained to the checker & got a sandwich to replace it. Ick!! It's crazy... there's so much sodium in soy sauce, I don't understand why they would soak the rice in it... YUCK.
Friday I finally was motivated to take the bus to Boston -- in part because there was no way I was going to survive Blanchard food for the full week! The ride went smoothly, and I even saw my firstie Zainab for the first leg of the journey. All the elevators were working so I didn't have to drag my wheelie suitcase around, and the trains seemed to show up just as I arrived at the subway line. I took a nap finally when I arrived (sleepy from the lulling bus ride!)... and then we went out for Indian food in Davis Square. I prefer the place in Noho for my favorite masala, but the portions were definitely bigger here... and more in the way of extras (we had some sort of spicy plum sauce that was amazing). We started I heart Huckabees, but promptly fell asleep.
Saturday was a wonderfully lazy day. I slept tons trying to fight off this cold, and then we went out in the evening to Merry's birthday party. We talked to Merry a bit, who is great fun, but then found ourselves talking together and feeling awkward that we weren't mingling more... The problem being, that we both tend toward the wallflower mentality. And it seemed like everyone was already in their groups... And the people willing to strike up conversations with us were a bit, well, hard to get into. First there was a girl from Western Mass. who seemed rather hippie-ish and assured me that I really NEED to go to the Oregon Country Fair. Not just go, but find a vender (back in Oregon we call them carnies) to sneak me in overnight. OK. Maybe it's just me, but I would not feel super safe staying with a carnie overnight at the fair. After that awkward conversation ended, we soon found ourselves talking to a guy that Merry might like the day before. Apparently he's from Moldova. Luckily Andrew had at least heard of this country, because I'm not so good with geography. Once we extricated ourselves from that conversation, I think we were both ready to head out.
The highlight of the evening, though, was Merry's friends singing "Oh Merry" instead of "Oh Sherry." I wish I'd known Merry at MHC -- she's hilarious and so energetic. We're adoping each other for Big/Little Sister, because mine deserted me and she was abroad junior year. Another highlight was the strange coincidence of Dan -- who was also having a birthday. His gf, who he was flying out to see the next day in Seattle, was an intern with Andrew at Microsoft AND went abroad to Amsterdam at the same time with him. Strange.
Sunday was pretty quiet, until Andrew's roommate Mo started in on his Star Wars marathon party. Andrew & I ducked out to Jon & Jen's for dinner on the new grill. We hung out till Desperate Housewives was over (sooo good this week). The party was still going strong back at the apt. It sounded as though the apt. was under attack, with side commentary compliments of Mo. The place was pretty much trashed afterwards, and I finally deigned to turn off the tv at like 5 am after realizing that Mo had, in fact, decided not to bother. This morning I decided I couldn't stand it, and took out half the trash bags & cleaned up the counters & rangetop. The dishes, however, are all Mo's. Those I'm refusing to touch! Further proof why I NEED a studio at Stanford next year, and why I'm never living with any guys except Andrew (who's as OCD as me, and cleaner than any other representrative of the male species that I've ever known). Andrew was equally irate -- and is looking forward to his own place starting this summer that he can keep obsessively clean. I've never seen any guy but him actually PICK UP CRUMBS off the floor immediately after dropping them. In fact, he did it just last night at Jon & Jen's. Wow!
Today I was watching TV and decided that I should really read something instead of vegging to VH1's celebrity moments on tape. So I was looking at this article from the NYT, I think it went out on the 15th, about class in America. It made me feel vindicated in leaning toward Marxist theory and claiming that class is still a valid issue today...
Anyway, now it's time for vegging again!
Monday, May 09, 2005
Another full week... I'm all done!! Except for one presentation that doesn't count for anything tomorrow in the Eng. Dept...
Tues: Last day of undergrad. classes!! I was kind of tired from staying up and working on my presentation for Eng. 319, but, it wasn't so bad... running on adrenaline & excitement. At 4 pm we had strawberries & champagne, which was awesome. The champagne was gross, but the strawberries were good. And it was fun drinking ANYTHING at that point, just to get tipsy and celebrate, FINALLY! I took some funny pictures of Beth & Korisha... dancing on the back of a truck. Well we were sitting on the truck because there was no where to sit but on the grass, and then there were these guys coming over and we were sure they were going to tell us to go away, but they didn't... Lots of mingling, some stealing of champagne, and even a perfect picture of Beth yelling into the photographer's camera! I hope that one makes it into the yearbook...
Anyway, after about one and a half glasses, I was done. I hadn't eaten since lunch, & I hadn't been sleeping much. So of course in this condition I went to the English Dept picnic. I saw Quillian & Emily C., and Quillian asked "Is Becky drunk? I've never seen Becky drunk." To which Emily wondered when he would have, but anyway... Corinne arrived shortly after, and we had one of those movie moments where we both ran toward each other and hugged. I gave her my resource books & articles to check my citations, and then we had picnic fare... Decent veggie burgers, but no dessert!!! So much fun. So many people I love in one place! We sold t-shirts, I made people endure picture-taking with me, & we went on mingling expeditions. Afterwards, we never-missed-a-swipe, and then got ready to go to Prof. S's house for our Stoppard party. Jess got us there without any problems. Such a cute house! We ate Rosencrunch & Guildenpop while watching Shakespeare in Love, which is SO MUCH BETTER than I remembered. I got the Twelfth Night stuff, since I'd just seen the play at school, but I definitely did NOT pick up on John Webster or Christopher Marlowe the first time around. And it was just way better after reading/ seeing more of Stoppard's work. Many similarities... it was tempting to bring it into my paper on love ideologies... But anyway! That was another amazing time -- how often do you get to sit with a room full of people who have read Stoppard fairly extensively, love him, & want to talk about it? Ahh. And popcorn!
The ride home was a tad scary. First, Jess got lost. Then, we started seeing broken down cars and cemetaries, and some car was following right on Jess's butt...and we started comparing our plight to scary movie beginnings. I was specifically thinking of the beg. of Night of the Living Dead... or Urban Legend. But we ended up turning around and getting back to MHC minus any zombie encounters or hooks attached to car doors.
Weds: Started selling English Dept. t-shirts at lunch, and I started writing my final papers. I had dinner with everyone at Wilder... our last Gracious dinner!! And it was pretty amazing. Lots of random appetizers, like seafood pinwheels & terra chips & cherry tomatoes with fresh mozarella. But the desserts... ahh. The strawberries were incredible -- smaller and sweeter, like our Oregon strawberries. And mini cheesecakes w/ fudge sauce. Ahhh...!
From dessert, I went to the SAW dessert in the Great Room. The chocolate dipped strawberries weren't as good, but I ate them anyway. Along with a big piece of fudge cake. Good times! =) We talked about the program & what we'd learned from it... a nice wrap up. And they gave us MHC tote bags which made me happy (although the art museum ones are sooo perfect... but now that I have, well, now I have three khaki totes since my advisor gave me one to carry books in, too, now I can't see buying a fourth!) They'd also asked our profs to give feedback to mentors... I love my Prof.!
After SAW, it was time for the last V8's jam. Somehow, they made Gamble look cool w/ twinkly lights. The singing was great... esp. their new song, "At Last." Kathleen & I were very impressed. Then it was back to work on my Stoppard paper, which I worked on till late!
Thurs. was more of the same... Selling t-shirts, mentoring, and writing the Stoppard paper. I stayed up till quite late... drinking rooibos tea & eating leftover strawberries & cheesecake. Walking around this campus at like 10:30 at night during finals is an odd experience. Everything's blooming right now, so walking around campus first of all is a very... well, aromatic experience. Then people were playing softball in the dark on Pageant Green. Strange.
Friday: more of the same! I sold t-shirts at Blanchard for a little while, walked Ashley to the main dining service building, proofread my Stoppard paper, and started my 319 paper. In the evening I got ready for dinner out for Andrew's birthday. I got rather dressed up, & curled my hair... Fun ways to procrastinate. I took him to the Indian restaurant in Noho (the good one). I had the same thing as last time... so excellent. Andrew enjoyed it, and said afterwards that he's now decided he likes Indian food. Yay =) Afterwards we had our romantic evening, but Andrew fell asleep during Heathers. Strange movie. I didn't really get all the croquet playing, but I went with it.
Saturday it was raining and miserable out. Andrew slept in till like, 2, while I balanced & made out Verbosity accounts for the audit. Which I passed with flying colors, might I add! & Verbosity got the full amount we asked for, $800, so... go us!! I think next year they should ask for even more and start publishing once a semester, or just step up the quality of the one edition per year. Since it was pretty gross out -- windy and rainy -- Andrew decided to nix his plans of hanging out in Amherst alone. So he came with me to our floor reunion dinner since he knows most everyone. Hilarious... kept going back to toilet humor. And I stole even more italian ices to add to my collection (which I had started after eating with Kathleen in Abbey a few days prior... they had so many ices... I put three in my hoodie pocket).
I worked a bit more in the evening on my paper, and finally finished!! Then I talked Andrew into driving me over to the library to turn in all my books. We carried them together, & I warned the girl working there that the 19th century books seirously need some tape to keep body and soul together. We rented Almost Famous because I'd never seen it... and the girl working was so rude... It sounded like she said: "It's due on ten" or something, so I wanted clarification and asked, sorry, what? She gave me this weird look, raised her eyebrows, and said "On the TENTH, the TENTH of MAY" like I was being stupid. Not exactly scoring points on customer service, our library! And you'd think a senior done with papers & her thesis would be cut a little slack... but no.
Anyway, we then went over to Big Y. Did you know that Ben & Jerry's has tons of new flavors? I didn't. I talked Andrew into getting Fossil Fuel, which went well with brownies... Loved Almost Famous. I recommended it to Mom because I'm sure she and Tim will love the music.
Sunday was slightly better weather-wise. We took a Dunkin Donuts run, and then headed to the mall. I finally found a white dress for a decent price, since I'd heard from a reliable source that the dress I was going to wear looked like a nightgown =/ Also got the sandals at the Gap that I had wanted but couldn't afford till they dropped below half off =)
Back at MHC, Andrew proofread my 319 paper, and then we went to Fresh Side for our last time ever dinner there! Ahhhh! Sadness. Tea rolls & some spicy Korean noodles that I didn't think were that special... I prefered my standard ginger tofu rolls, personally.
Afterwards, we watched Desperate Housewives, which is getting so so good! Then... yummy Black Sheep dessert =) I'm going to miss that espreso cake...
Today was the last Monday morning that Andrew will drive away from the Delles to work... ahh! Sadness. I napped a little, and then read a little, mentally prepped for my defense, handed in my last paper... My defense went pretty smoothly I think. Prof. M was great (my third reader), MJS was wonderful as always, and Corinne was her amazing and supportive self. I got my usual chair, and Corinne her, for that feeling of continuity. They all had amazing points that I would love to incorporate if I ever come back to Mansfield. Afterwards they shook hands with me and C. blew me a kiss. Strange how they turned that into something enjoyable!
Afterwards... I rushed to Blanchard for sushi. I wasn't early enough for salmon & avocado, but I did manage to get spicy tuna rolls. Ate with Laura & Rhea & shared defense stories. There were four of us just done with our defenses, about to go, or prepping. Also saw Miranda, and chatted for a little bit. Then I planted myself in the art dept. computer room for about 3 hours to work on my poetry entry for the Clio-M. prize. Ate dinner with Kathleen & the third floor gang over at Prospect... got itchy from the bugs...
And now I'm back... Just got to prep for this thing tomorow... and I'm... really and truly... DONE!
Tues: Last day of undergrad. classes!! I was kind of tired from staying up and working on my presentation for Eng. 319, but, it wasn't so bad... running on adrenaline & excitement. At 4 pm we had strawberries & champagne, which was awesome. The champagne was gross, but the strawberries were good. And it was fun drinking ANYTHING at that point, just to get tipsy and celebrate, FINALLY! I took some funny pictures of Beth & Korisha... dancing on the back of a truck. Well we were sitting on the truck because there was no where to sit but on the grass, and then there were these guys coming over and we were sure they were going to tell us to go away, but they didn't... Lots of mingling, some stealing of champagne, and even a perfect picture of Beth yelling into the photographer's camera! I hope that one makes it into the yearbook...
Anyway, after about one and a half glasses, I was done. I hadn't eaten since lunch, & I hadn't been sleeping much. So of course in this condition I went to the English Dept picnic. I saw Quillian & Emily C., and Quillian asked "Is Becky drunk? I've never seen Becky drunk." To which Emily wondered when he would have, but anyway... Corinne arrived shortly after, and we had one of those movie moments where we both ran toward each other and hugged. I gave her my resource books & articles to check my citations, and then we had picnic fare... Decent veggie burgers, but no dessert!!! So much fun. So many people I love in one place! We sold t-shirts, I made people endure picture-taking with me, & we went on mingling expeditions. Afterwards, we never-missed-a-swipe, and then got ready to go to Prof. S's house for our Stoppard party. Jess got us there without any problems. Such a cute house! We ate Rosencrunch & Guildenpop while watching Shakespeare in Love, which is SO MUCH BETTER than I remembered. I got the Twelfth Night stuff, since I'd just seen the play at school, but I definitely did NOT pick up on John Webster or Christopher Marlowe the first time around. And it was just way better after reading/ seeing more of Stoppard's work. Many similarities... it was tempting to bring it into my paper on love ideologies... But anyway! That was another amazing time -- how often do you get to sit with a room full of people who have read Stoppard fairly extensively, love him, & want to talk about it? Ahh. And popcorn!
The ride home was a tad scary. First, Jess got lost. Then, we started seeing broken down cars and cemetaries, and some car was following right on Jess's butt...and we started comparing our plight to scary movie beginnings. I was specifically thinking of the beg. of Night of the Living Dead... or Urban Legend. But we ended up turning around and getting back to MHC minus any zombie encounters or hooks attached to car doors.
Weds: Started selling English Dept. t-shirts at lunch, and I started writing my final papers. I had dinner with everyone at Wilder... our last Gracious dinner!! And it was pretty amazing. Lots of random appetizers, like seafood pinwheels & terra chips & cherry tomatoes with fresh mozarella. But the desserts... ahh. The strawberries were incredible -- smaller and sweeter, like our Oregon strawberries. And mini cheesecakes w/ fudge sauce. Ahhh...!
From dessert, I went to the SAW dessert in the Great Room. The chocolate dipped strawberries weren't as good, but I ate them anyway. Along with a big piece of fudge cake. Good times! =) We talked about the program & what we'd learned from it... a nice wrap up. And they gave us MHC tote bags which made me happy (although the art museum ones are sooo perfect... but now that I have, well, now I have three khaki totes since my advisor gave me one to carry books in, too, now I can't see buying a fourth!) They'd also asked our profs to give feedback to mentors... I love my Prof.!
After SAW, it was time for the last V8's jam. Somehow, they made Gamble look cool w/ twinkly lights. The singing was great... esp. their new song, "At Last." Kathleen & I were very impressed. Then it was back to work on my Stoppard paper, which I worked on till late!
Thurs. was more of the same... Selling t-shirts, mentoring, and writing the Stoppard paper. I stayed up till quite late... drinking rooibos tea & eating leftover strawberries & cheesecake. Walking around this campus at like 10:30 at night during finals is an odd experience. Everything's blooming right now, so walking around campus first of all is a very... well, aromatic experience. Then people were playing softball in the dark on Pageant Green. Strange.
Friday: more of the same! I sold t-shirts at Blanchard for a little while, walked Ashley to the main dining service building, proofread my Stoppard paper, and started my 319 paper. In the evening I got ready for dinner out for Andrew's birthday. I got rather dressed up, & curled my hair... Fun ways to procrastinate. I took him to the Indian restaurant in Noho (the good one). I had the same thing as last time... so excellent. Andrew enjoyed it, and said afterwards that he's now decided he likes Indian food. Yay =) Afterwards we had our romantic evening, but Andrew fell asleep during Heathers. Strange movie. I didn't really get all the croquet playing, but I went with it.
Saturday it was raining and miserable out. Andrew slept in till like, 2, while I balanced & made out Verbosity accounts for the audit. Which I passed with flying colors, might I add! & Verbosity got the full amount we asked for, $800, so... go us!! I think next year they should ask for even more and start publishing once a semester, or just step up the quality of the one edition per year. Since it was pretty gross out -- windy and rainy -- Andrew decided to nix his plans of hanging out in Amherst alone. So he came with me to our floor reunion dinner since he knows most everyone. Hilarious... kept going back to toilet humor. And I stole even more italian ices to add to my collection (which I had started after eating with Kathleen in Abbey a few days prior... they had so many ices... I put three in my hoodie pocket).
I worked a bit more in the evening on my paper, and finally finished!! Then I talked Andrew into driving me over to the library to turn in all my books. We carried them together, & I warned the girl working there that the 19th century books seirously need some tape to keep body and soul together. We rented Almost Famous because I'd never seen it... and the girl working was so rude... It sounded like she said: "It's due on ten" or something, so I wanted clarification and asked, sorry, what? She gave me this weird look, raised her eyebrows, and said "On the TENTH, the TENTH of MAY" like I was being stupid. Not exactly scoring points on customer service, our library! And you'd think a senior done with papers & her thesis would be cut a little slack... but no.
Anyway, we then went over to Big Y. Did you know that Ben & Jerry's has tons of new flavors? I didn't. I talked Andrew into getting Fossil Fuel, which went well with brownies... Loved Almost Famous. I recommended it to Mom because I'm sure she and Tim will love the music.
Sunday was slightly better weather-wise. We took a Dunkin Donuts run, and then headed to the mall. I finally found a white dress for a decent price, since I'd heard from a reliable source that the dress I was going to wear looked like a nightgown =/ Also got the sandals at the Gap that I had wanted but couldn't afford till they dropped below half off =)
Back at MHC, Andrew proofread my 319 paper, and then we went to Fresh Side for our last time ever dinner there! Ahhhh! Sadness. Tea rolls & some spicy Korean noodles that I didn't think were that special... I prefered my standard ginger tofu rolls, personally.
Afterwards, we watched Desperate Housewives, which is getting so so good! Then... yummy Black Sheep dessert =) I'm going to miss that espreso cake...
Today was the last Monday morning that Andrew will drive away from the Delles to work... ahh! Sadness. I napped a little, and then read a little, mentally prepped for my defense, handed in my last paper... My defense went pretty smoothly I think. Prof. M was great (my third reader), MJS was wonderful as always, and Corinne was her amazing and supportive self. I got my usual chair, and Corinne her, for that feeling of continuity. They all had amazing points that I would love to incorporate if I ever come back to Mansfield. Afterwards they shook hands with me and C. blew me a kiss. Strange how they turned that into something enjoyable!
Afterwards... I rushed to Blanchard for sushi. I wasn't early enough for salmon & avocado, but I did manage to get spicy tuna rolls. Ate with Laura & Rhea & shared defense stories. There were four of us just done with our defenses, about to go, or prepping. Also saw Miranda, and chatted for a little bit. Then I planted myself in the art dept. computer room for about 3 hours to work on my poetry entry for the Clio-M. prize. Ate dinner with Kathleen & the third floor gang over at Prospect... got itchy from the bugs...
And now I'm back... Just got to prep for this thing tomorow... and I'm... really and truly... DONE!
Monday, May 02, 2005
This past week has been so incredible. I feel like I've been at full capacity both academically & socially... I think I left off my last post at Thurs. evening, so let's pick up where I left off... =)
Friday: I wandered around in the sunny weather, with good intentions of being productive, which never really were realized. I got a bit of work done on the revising of my thesis, saw the May Pole from a distance, talked to Ashley, talked with some of my firsties from Eng. 101 (ahh I'm going to miss them SO much), ate dinner in my room waiting to hear about the English Dept. t-shirts, etc... Around about 5:30 or 6 I stopped proofreading my thesis to get ready for Senior Ball... I had to do all the usual unnecessary preparations -- like showering & painting my nails, which left little time for the more necessary things -- like getting dressed & doing hair & makeup. Andrew got here super early, so that didn't help, either. He brought a corsage, which was so sweet... So maybe Senior Ball doesn't exactly require a corsage, but people understood once I explained that I missed out on my high school proms & that Andrew is making it up for me by being the best date ever. *Such a fun night!*
We got to Chapin for the dance rather early -- early enough to get free champagne and for me to eat THREE chocolate cake bars from the Black Sheep -- Oh, bliss in a square! It was a gorgeous job with decorations... As you walked in, a jazz band played in the near left hand corner; to the near right the bar was set up... there were park benches, trees, and streetlamps, with various twinkly lights thrown about... perfect for the "Walk in the Park" theme. I enjoyed the jazz immensely, and the DJ somewhat... the DJ got way better, of course, when he started playing '80s music (Madonn'as Like a Prayer, old school rap songs, Michael Jackson's Beat It...) Andrew and I danced, or tried to. I stupidly forgot to bring money for alcohol, so I don't think we were quite as tipsy as we would have needed to be to really, well, make total fools of ourselves. Saw everyone... Karuna, Kathleen, Claudia, Laura K., Jess & Lauren... quite fun!
Saturday morning we slept way way in, since we didn't get to sleep till nearly 4 am. I worked on my thesis after grabbing lunch, and then Andrew drove into Amherst for Thai food while I worked at proofing things and applying his last minute edits to my stories. After dinner (he had something involving beef & fried rice & string beans & zucchini that was good, I had usual pad thai, of course), it was time to get ready for the concert... The opener was very political, and Ani Difranco was amazing. Andrew enjoyed her, too -- and she read a poem, which made me happy. Very happy, peaceful evening after thesis stress.
I worked on my thesis late into Sat. night... around 3 am I had a formatting problem after trying to adjust the margins to make room for the binding. It was dreadful, dreadful... Andrew sat and tried to explain why it had happened, and I got so made at whoever the hell created the Word program, and then Andrew had to sit there and hold me as I got all teary & went through the entire 130-some pages looking for errors. Didn't get to sleep till quite late (or early depending).
In the morning I dragged my ass to brunch thinking that we were going to have a play reading... since no one but me and Ariel showed up, though, we decided to just eat together. I brought some food back to Andrew... and settled in for creating my table of contents, acknowledgements page, etc... Had an emergency conference with Corinne over where to put the works cited pages and such... Then we had to buy paper... And I printed my thesis, for free, I refuse to pay to print my thesis on my own paper on this campus...! So we got the thesis in its binder, and then I could rest... ie., go out for dinner. We went to Fedora's... nostalgic! I had the blueberry beer as recommended by Beth... soooo good.
In the evening... I had to start reading for Monday's last Stoppard class... and we breaked for Desperate Housewives (it's getting juicy!) Then more reading... and bed.
This morning I had to get up early, finish reading the play... then I napped since I had extra time... submitted my work for the Phi Beta Kappa award, submitted my thesis, the clean, bound copy, to the English Dept, grabbed lunch, communicated with the t-shirt people, finally ate, got worried that I needed two extra copies of my thesis in the dept for it to be official, was told that's not true, rushed back to Stoppard class, & had an awesome class (I was wide awake & (I hope) saying relevant things throughout). Afterwards, after a couple of errands, I went to the Blessing & Sending of the Seniors Ceremony in Abby Chapel. It was awesome... We all sat on this big circular labyrinth thing on the stage, and each religious/ spiritual group blessed us with chants, songs, or little symbolic items (such as potpourri, salt, poems). Then we each created a square with our names on them to be part of a paper quilt. Quite nice... I had to slip out early in case the t-shirt guy called to drop off the boxes... and I walked out with everyone singing on stage & a misty rainy day outside the chapel.
The t-shirts are finally here!!! I wore one to dinner to advertise... ran into lots of people, including Rabia & Kiara... so I hope we sell out!!
That's all for now... So, wow... tomorrow morning I have a brief presentation in 319, then all I have is my thesis defense and two papers! WOW. Tomorrow is my last day of undergrad classes. And tomorrow is going to be incredible, but more on that later (after it's actually happened =)
Friday: I wandered around in the sunny weather, with good intentions of being productive, which never really were realized. I got a bit of work done on the revising of my thesis, saw the May Pole from a distance, talked to Ashley, talked with some of my firsties from Eng. 101 (ahh I'm going to miss them SO much), ate dinner in my room waiting to hear about the English Dept. t-shirts, etc... Around about 5:30 or 6 I stopped proofreading my thesis to get ready for Senior Ball... I had to do all the usual unnecessary preparations -- like showering & painting my nails, which left little time for the more necessary things -- like getting dressed & doing hair & makeup. Andrew got here super early, so that didn't help, either. He brought a corsage, which was so sweet... So maybe Senior Ball doesn't exactly require a corsage, but people understood once I explained that I missed out on my high school proms & that Andrew is making it up for me by being the best date ever. *Such a fun night!*
We got to Chapin for the dance rather early -- early enough to get free champagne and for me to eat THREE chocolate cake bars from the Black Sheep -- Oh, bliss in a square! It was a gorgeous job with decorations... As you walked in, a jazz band played in the near left hand corner; to the near right the bar was set up... there were park benches, trees, and streetlamps, with various twinkly lights thrown about... perfect for the "Walk in the Park" theme. I enjoyed the jazz immensely, and the DJ somewhat... the DJ got way better, of course, when he started playing '80s music (Madonn'as Like a Prayer, old school rap songs, Michael Jackson's Beat It...) Andrew and I danced, or tried to. I stupidly forgot to bring money for alcohol, so I don't think we were quite as tipsy as we would have needed to be to really, well, make total fools of ourselves. Saw everyone... Karuna, Kathleen, Claudia, Laura K., Jess & Lauren... quite fun!
Saturday morning we slept way way in, since we didn't get to sleep till nearly 4 am. I worked on my thesis after grabbing lunch, and then Andrew drove into Amherst for Thai food while I worked at proofing things and applying his last minute edits to my stories. After dinner (he had something involving beef & fried rice & string beans & zucchini that was good, I had usual pad thai, of course), it was time to get ready for the concert... The opener was very political, and Ani Difranco was amazing. Andrew enjoyed her, too -- and she read a poem, which made me happy. Very happy, peaceful evening after thesis stress.
I worked on my thesis late into Sat. night... around 3 am I had a formatting problem after trying to adjust the margins to make room for the binding. It was dreadful, dreadful... Andrew sat and tried to explain why it had happened, and I got so made at whoever the hell created the Word program, and then Andrew had to sit there and hold me as I got all teary & went through the entire 130-some pages looking for errors. Didn't get to sleep till quite late (or early depending).
In the morning I dragged my ass to brunch thinking that we were going to have a play reading... since no one but me and Ariel showed up, though, we decided to just eat together. I brought some food back to Andrew... and settled in for creating my table of contents, acknowledgements page, etc... Had an emergency conference with Corinne over where to put the works cited pages and such... Then we had to buy paper... And I printed my thesis, for free, I refuse to pay to print my thesis on my own paper on this campus...! So we got the thesis in its binder, and then I could rest... ie., go out for dinner. We went to Fedora's... nostalgic! I had the blueberry beer as recommended by Beth... soooo good.
In the evening... I had to start reading for Monday's last Stoppard class... and we breaked for Desperate Housewives (it's getting juicy!) Then more reading... and bed.
This morning I had to get up early, finish reading the play... then I napped since I had extra time... submitted my work for the Phi Beta Kappa award, submitted my thesis, the clean, bound copy, to the English Dept, grabbed lunch, communicated with the t-shirt people, finally ate, got worried that I needed two extra copies of my thesis in the dept for it to be official, was told that's not true, rushed back to Stoppard class, & had an awesome class (I was wide awake & (I hope) saying relevant things throughout). Afterwards, after a couple of errands, I went to the Blessing & Sending of the Seniors Ceremony in Abby Chapel. It was awesome... We all sat on this big circular labyrinth thing on the stage, and each religious/ spiritual group blessed us with chants, songs, or little symbolic items (such as potpourri, salt, poems). Then we each created a square with our names on them to be part of a paper quilt. Quite nice... I had to slip out early in case the t-shirt guy called to drop off the boxes... and I walked out with everyone singing on stage & a misty rainy day outside the chapel.
The t-shirts are finally here!!! I wore one to dinner to advertise... ran into lots of people, including Rabia & Kiara... so I hope we sell out!!
That's all for now... So, wow... tomorrow morning I have a brief presentation in 319, then all I have is my thesis defense and two papers! WOW. Tomorrow is my last day of undergrad classes. And tomorrow is going to be incredible, but more on that later (after it's actually happened =)
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Hmmm. So I'm trying to think of highlights of the last ten days or so. And, as usual, I'm drawing a blank. What did I do last week? I'm not really sure. Lots of work... Friday the Glascock festivities started... I went to the Life & Letters talk, which was... hilarious. Mainly because of something that Prof. H. did to bring a close to a rather awkward -- rambling -- wrap up. That evening I got dressed up for the contest, and listened... lots of good stuff, and our reader's poetry was quite satisfying, as it is similar, I think, in aesthetic principles, to what I write. But I still wished that I was reading (I mean come on, first runner up two years in a row??) Anyway... Saturday morning I went with Julia to hear the judges read, and hear the results. The Smithie won... I personally thought her poetry was the least polished of the bunch, and the least thought out. Saturday night I went to my first seder with Karuna, Lindsay, Susan, Sarah, & Molly. It was great, partly because I had good company =)
Sunday... I got up pretty late, after working late into the night. I finally got my ass to brunch around noon thirty, and met up with Kathleen. Then I had a huge t-shirt fiasco... by default I'm kind of in charge of the English Dept. t-shirts, and I had to scan in the image and set up stuff with the screen printers. Sunday evening I got some work done, and then read theses with Karuna.
Monday... I went to N. Delle's Presidential Tea & told Jo jo that I'm satisfied with my education here, and that my classes have been great in my major, and that I'm going to grad school... it was a nice feeling of closure.
OK, Tues. morning the weirdest thing happened. I told Andrew so here's the IM conversation:
Pink Poodledog: this morning, 5:30 am: I wake up to some bizarre undercurrent of noise -- like a shovel being steadily scraped across pavement from a distance. of course now I need to pee, so I get up out of bed, look out my window, and see two people gesturing out on the green
Pink Poodledog: so I go to get my glasses, thinking I recognize them, and then the fire alarm goes off
Pink Poodledog: so I get my coat on and flip flops, run out -- we've had all our drills so I know something has set this off....
Pink Poodledog: we get outside...
Pink Poodledog: and wait for 45 minutes. three fire engines come, smoke is billowing out of the basement on the north side, and we can see another flume going up above the roof from the other side
Pink Poodledog: all that hassle -- no explanation -- still none today, as to what the f*#$ happened and what the hell is being done to prevent it from happening again
Pink Poodledog: or what has been fixed thus far (ex: can we take a hot shower, or not?)
ANDPEW: but what about the people who were outside before the alarm went off? they didn't know what caused it?
Pink Poodledog: so then finally we're allowed to shuffle back in, though it's still smoking, and it smells like ... you know the smell of a burnt pot, after you've tried to boiled water and all the water's boiled away?
Pink Poodledog: that's what it smelled like in all the common spaces
Pink Poodledog: no idea, when I looked again before jetting out of my room they weren't there
Pink Poodledog: so by the time we're back in the dorm... it's too bright out to get back to sleep easily, the crows are going at their f&$*ing annoying ass squawking, and I'm wide awake...
Pink Poodledog: sooo annoying... so I only got like 5 hours of sleep at most
See, I whine to everyone, not just my blog readers!
Anyway...
Tuesday evening Azeen & I read theses in the evening after my last ever small group for SAW. It was great -- and I love her project!
Weds. was a down day at first -- it was gross outside, and I realized I had more work due than expected. I was frantically getting stuff together for my poetry portfolio & Eng. Dept. contests. But then I went to my last 101 class (the English class I mentor). The two groups presenting were awesome, simply awesome. Eleanor was channeling a mix of Jerry Blank of Strangers with Candy & Lorraine (of the funny throat clearing noises) of MAD TV. Then Mary & Linda's group made up a ritual based on a myth involving the Little Bru-ha-ha & a plant with Michael Jackson fruit. I laughed so hard I cried. I can't believe how incredibly lucky I was to mentor for this class. I talked to Prof. Davis afterwards, and we hugged, and it was the most satisfying class... ever. And I completely love the firsties -- I hope I'm lucky enough to have students like them in the courses I TA & teach in grad school. I finally realized that yes, I like doing this, and I think this is what I want to do with my life.
Today was kind of sad... We had our last Verse writing class, and I'm not kidding when I say that we should have a Livejournal community based upon that class. We were laughing like crazy over something I can hardly remember now, instead of looking at my poem -- a situation I was perfectly happy about! (Sometimes I don't feel like defending my poetry thought of the hour...) Plus I treated myself to chai... ahhh... chai.
This evening was lovely. A group of us went to Noho for Miranda's birthday, to eat dinner at Osaka. Miranda got hibachi, so we were treated to a whole show: flames, bouncing eggs, burning towers of onion, flying chunks of fried egg... I did my usual sushi thing (i.e., anything with avocado and/or asparagus). We took lots of pictures... I had the best time, sitting by Miranda and Sarah... We must all stay in touch! Afterwards we explored in Faces, taking funny pictures, and then ran through traffic to catch the bus. Back at MHC, I lured everyone to the Delles for our chocolate bash =)
So that's the main stuff... On the thesis front: I finally decided to go with my reader and 2nd reader. They've both given me final edits, and I've applied almost everything to the critical chapters, and then just need to do the same with my short stories (a job I'm saving for tomorrow). Then I need to proof everything, add a table of contents & acknowledgements page... print... and... I'm done!
And I'm graduating in... what... 23, 24 days? This was my last full week as an undergrad...
Sunday... I got up pretty late, after working late into the night. I finally got my ass to brunch around noon thirty, and met up with Kathleen. Then I had a huge t-shirt fiasco... by default I'm kind of in charge of the English Dept. t-shirts, and I had to scan in the image and set up stuff with the screen printers. Sunday evening I got some work done, and then read theses with Karuna.
Monday... I went to N. Delle's Presidential Tea & told Jo jo that I'm satisfied with my education here, and that my classes have been great in my major, and that I'm going to grad school... it was a nice feeling of closure.
OK, Tues. morning the weirdest thing happened. I told Andrew so here's the IM conversation:
Pink Poodledog: this morning, 5:30 am: I wake up to some bizarre undercurrent of noise -- like a shovel being steadily scraped across pavement from a distance. of course now I need to pee, so I get up out of bed, look out my window, and see two people gesturing out on the green
Pink Poodledog: so I go to get my glasses, thinking I recognize them, and then the fire alarm goes off
Pink Poodledog: so I get my coat on and flip flops, run out -- we've had all our drills so I know something has set this off....
Pink Poodledog: we get outside...
Pink Poodledog: and wait for 45 minutes. three fire engines come, smoke is billowing out of the basement on the north side, and we can see another flume going up above the roof from the other side
Pink Poodledog: all that hassle -- no explanation -- still none today, as to what the f*#$ happened and what the hell is being done to prevent it from happening again
Pink Poodledog: or what has been fixed thus far (ex: can we take a hot shower, or not?)
ANDPEW: but what about the people who were outside before the alarm went off? they didn't know what caused it?
Pink Poodledog: so then finally we're allowed to shuffle back in, though it's still smoking, and it smells like ... you know the smell of a burnt pot, after you've tried to boiled water and all the water's boiled away?
Pink Poodledog: that's what it smelled like in all the common spaces
Pink Poodledog: no idea, when I looked again before jetting out of my room they weren't there
Pink Poodledog: so by the time we're back in the dorm... it's too bright out to get back to sleep easily, the crows are going at their f&$*ing annoying ass squawking, and I'm wide awake...
Pink Poodledog: sooo annoying... so I only got like 5 hours of sleep at most
See, I whine to everyone, not just my blog readers!
Anyway...
Tuesday evening Azeen & I read theses in the evening after my last ever small group for SAW. It was great -- and I love her project!
Weds. was a down day at first -- it was gross outside, and I realized I had more work due than expected. I was frantically getting stuff together for my poetry portfolio & Eng. Dept. contests. But then I went to my last 101 class (the English class I mentor). The two groups presenting were awesome, simply awesome. Eleanor was channeling a mix of Jerry Blank of Strangers with Candy & Lorraine (of the funny throat clearing noises) of MAD TV. Then Mary & Linda's group made up a ritual based on a myth involving the Little Bru-ha-ha & a plant with Michael Jackson fruit. I laughed so hard I cried. I can't believe how incredibly lucky I was to mentor for this class. I talked to Prof. Davis afterwards, and we hugged, and it was the most satisfying class... ever. And I completely love the firsties -- I hope I'm lucky enough to have students like them in the courses I TA & teach in grad school. I finally realized that yes, I like doing this, and I think this is what I want to do with my life.
Today was kind of sad... We had our last Verse writing class, and I'm not kidding when I say that we should have a Livejournal community based upon that class. We were laughing like crazy over something I can hardly remember now, instead of looking at my poem -- a situation I was perfectly happy about! (Sometimes I don't feel like defending my poetry thought of the hour...) Plus I treated myself to chai... ahhh... chai.
This evening was lovely. A group of us went to Noho for Miranda's birthday, to eat dinner at Osaka. Miranda got hibachi, so we were treated to a whole show: flames, bouncing eggs, burning towers of onion, flying chunks of fried egg... I did my usual sushi thing (i.e., anything with avocado and/or asparagus). We took lots of pictures... I had the best time, sitting by Miranda and Sarah... We must all stay in touch! Afterwards we explored in Faces, taking funny pictures, and then ran through traffic to catch the bus. Back at MHC, I lured everyone to the Delles for our chocolate bash =)
So that's the main stuff... On the thesis front: I finally decided to go with my reader and 2nd reader. They've both given me final edits, and I've applied almost everything to the critical chapters, and then just need to do the same with my short stories (a job I'm saving for tomorrow). Then I need to proof everything, add a table of contents & acknowledgements page... print... and... I'm done!
And I'm graduating in... what... 23, 24 days? This was my last full week as an undergrad...
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Two things I forgot to whine about:
1. Our dorm t-shirts are aaaaawful. First off, they're yellow -- a color which only looks good on a select few (me not being one of them). Then, it has a hamburger on it, which I just don't like on principle. Lastly, it says "delle-icious," which, I admit, is a clever way to use our dorm name, EXCEPT for the fact that this same tactic is used ALL THE TIME, most notably on the shirt I got my FIRST YEAR while living in the delles, which ALSO said "delle-icious" but only with a picture of a Chinese food take out box, rather than a burger. So not pleased. Plus it's in a 70s bubbly letter style that doesn't set well with me. Karuna is saving the day -- her dorm has a leftover hoodie with a way cooler theme!
2. Monday morning: I'd stayed up till 3 am working on my thesis introduction, and was scheduled to get just barely 7 hours of sleep (my minimum necessary to be alert and functioning). 8:30 AM, an hour before my alarm was to go off, a loud foghorn blare -- the opening of our fire alarm. I woke up -- groggy and interrupted in the middle of the much sought after REM cycle (ie "rapid eye movement" -- when you're dreaming, that last phase of sleep that actually makes you feel rested -- proven at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NY in the '50s to be the really vital part of your sleep cycle -- if you're woken up each night whenever you start REM-ing, you're cranky & ill-rested). I realized that I couldn't fall back asleep unless I peed, so I got up for the restroom. Everyone else was out in the hallway, too, and on the way back to my room I was complaining to Jess. This might be the one thing she remembers about living next to me: "I was in the middle of REM. I'm never going to get that back!" The alarm started going off twice more in a ten minute period. VERY pissed off about it! I can't wait to live not-in-a-dorm =/
1. Our dorm t-shirts are aaaaawful. First off, they're yellow -- a color which only looks good on a select few (me not being one of them). Then, it has a hamburger on it, which I just don't like on principle. Lastly, it says "delle-icious," which, I admit, is a clever way to use our dorm name, EXCEPT for the fact that this same tactic is used ALL THE TIME, most notably on the shirt I got my FIRST YEAR while living in the delles, which ALSO said "delle-icious" but only with a picture of a Chinese food take out box, rather than a burger. So not pleased. Plus it's in a 70s bubbly letter style that doesn't set well with me. Karuna is saving the day -- her dorm has a leftover hoodie with a way cooler theme!
2. Monday morning: I'd stayed up till 3 am working on my thesis introduction, and was scheduled to get just barely 7 hours of sleep (my minimum necessary to be alert and functioning). 8:30 AM, an hour before my alarm was to go off, a loud foghorn blare -- the opening of our fire alarm. I woke up -- groggy and interrupted in the middle of the much sought after REM cycle (ie "rapid eye movement" -- when you're dreaming, that last phase of sleep that actually makes you feel rested -- proven at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NY in the '50s to be the really vital part of your sleep cycle -- if you're woken up each night whenever you start REM-ing, you're cranky & ill-rested). I realized that I couldn't fall back asleep unless I peed, so I got up for the restroom. Everyone else was out in the hallway, too, and on the way back to my room I was complaining to Jess. This might be the one thing she remembers about living next to me: "I was in the middle of REM. I'm never going to get that back!" The alarm started going off twice more in a ten minute period. VERY pissed off about it! I can't wait to live not-in-a-dorm =/
It's been a busy week!
Last week my cousin, Janel, was visiting the area since she'll be starting an MA program at Umass in the fall for creative writing. So Tuesday we drove around Amherst in her rental car, looking at various apartment options. But I think she ended up finding something the next day, a bit north of the town, that will work out better. I had small group for SAW, so we weren't able to eat dinner together -- we met up afterwards to see Prison of Women though (a play being put on at MHC, in which Miranda had a part!) I enjoyed all the visuals, and realized that the script the students had made was better in my opinion than the original they used for a basis. Weds. Janel & I got together for dinner -- I'd suggested Fresh Side since it's one of my favorite places here. We caught up on family, work/ school, & plans for next year... Quite fun, because Janel was always my favorite cousin growing up; I felt a connection because she also liked mashed potatoes best at Christmas dinners!
Friday was a busy day, as we started Verbosity layout. We basically hung out in the Info Commons around a large monitor...all afternoon! Friday evening Sarah & I joined up with Jess, Diana, and Mel to go see the production of Arcadia at Smith. We were quite jealous of the theater building at Smith - so much nicer than ours here! We ate pizza, and headed over... Sarah & I were in the front row, center... amazing! No one in front of us... No heads obscuring parts of the stage... wow. Then Prof. Salter & her husband came in, and they had seats right next to us. Very cool. I appreciated the ambiguous ending, as I'd been depressed over T's death as I read the play that morning. Afterwards, we tried to go for ice cream, but everything was closed.
Saturday morning I had thesis work, and then I joined up for another afternoon of Verbosity layout. Managed to do something fun in the evening though, to make up for the fact that I didn't go to Boston this weekend (Andrew, Jon, & Jen were giving Andre (the Brazilian cousin) a tour of Boston). So I went with my neighbors & Kathleen to the piano concert, since both my profs. wrote song lyrics to be set to music. Kathleen & I got the giggles as we sat through a very long piano piece... I just can't stay interested in piano music for that long.
Anyway... after a long night of work, Sunday morning I went to brunch to meet Miranda's mom (who was visiting). On the way over to another Verbosity meeting, I stopped at the carnival, managing to consume a snow cone and two servings of cotton candy. We got the cover art done, & Laura & I went to the carnival for snow cones... We had to wait awhile for them to get more ice... And then this woman in front of us kept trying to get the last of the cherry syrup out of the bottle. It sprayed all over her, but instead of stopping, she kept going! And managed to get it all over my supposedly dry clean only skirt, sweater, and white tank top... She mumbled sorry and hurried off... needless to say, she didn't even offer to pay for cleaning (which I think would be a standard, courteous gesture... she wasn't a student, either, so it's not like she could play the starving student card...)
After cleaning up, Laura & I sat in the gazebo. It's really quite nice. You're outside, but not exposed to the mosquitoes. Plus it smells like sun warmed wood. That night I finally got down to finishing my introduction. This week I'm meeting with Corinne, Prof. Ahmed, Quillian, and Azeen over the thesis. Ack! I think it will end up relying more heavily upon the critical chapters. Quillian thinks otherwise it will be too long and disjointed (before special big margins, it's 68 pages of critical work, and at least 30 of stories... seems kinda unwieldy). If I were starting this project over again, I'd nix the stories & go heavier into Marxist theory, weaving it into the close reading... If I had world enough and time... right?
Anyway, that's my news! It's been gorgeous out, which has been good for my mental health... I'm so glad to be going to CA next year... I never again want to live anywhere that requires one to wear pajama bottoms under one's pants just to stay warm in the winter!
Last week my cousin, Janel, was visiting the area since she'll be starting an MA program at Umass in the fall for creative writing. So Tuesday we drove around Amherst in her rental car, looking at various apartment options. But I think she ended up finding something the next day, a bit north of the town, that will work out better. I had small group for SAW, so we weren't able to eat dinner together -- we met up afterwards to see Prison of Women though (a play being put on at MHC, in which Miranda had a part!) I enjoyed all the visuals, and realized that the script the students had made was better in my opinion than the original they used for a basis. Weds. Janel & I got together for dinner -- I'd suggested Fresh Side since it's one of my favorite places here. We caught up on family, work/ school, & plans for next year... Quite fun, because Janel was always my favorite cousin growing up; I felt a connection because she also liked mashed potatoes best at Christmas dinners!
Friday was a busy day, as we started Verbosity layout. We basically hung out in the Info Commons around a large monitor...all afternoon! Friday evening Sarah & I joined up with Jess, Diana, and Mel to go see the production of Arcadia at Smith. We were quite jealous of the theater building at Smith - so much nicer than ours here! We ate pizza, and headed over... Sarah & I were in the front row, center... amazing! No one in front of us... No heads obscuring parts of the stage... wow. Then Prof. Salter & her husband came in, and they had seats right next to us. Very cool. I appreciated the ambiguous ending, as I'd been depressed over T's death as I read the play that morning. Afterwards, we tried to go for ice cream, but everything was closed.
Saturday morning I had thesis work, and then I joined up for another afternoon of Verbosity layout. Managed to do something fun in the evening though, to make up for the fact that I didn't go to Boston this weekend (Andrew, Jon, & Jen were giving Andre (the Brazilian cousin) a tour of Boston). So I went with my neighbors & Kathleen to the piano concert, since both my profs. wrote song lyrics to be set to music. Kathleen & I got the giggles as we sat through a very long piano piece... I just can't stay interested in piano music for that long.
Anyway... after a long night of work, Sunday morning I went to brunch to meet Miranda's mom (who was visiting). On the way over to another Verbosity meeting, I stopped at the carnival, managing to consume a snow cone and two servings of cotton candy. We got the cover art done, & Laura & I went to the carnival for snow cones... We had to wait awhile for them to get more ice... And then this woman in front of us kept trying to get the last of the cherry syrup out of the bottle. It sprayed all over her, but instead of stopping, she kept going! And managed to get it all over my supposedly dry clean only skirt, sweater, and white tank top... She mumbled sorry and hurried off... needless to say, she didn't even offer to pay for cleaning (which I think would be a standard, courteous gesture... she wasn't a student, either, so it's not like she could play the starving student card...)
After cleaning up, Laura & I sat in the gazebo. It's really quite nice. You're outside, but not exposed to the mosquitoes. Plus it smells like sun warmed wood. That night I finally got down to finishing my introduction. This week I'm meeting with Corinne, Prof. Ahmed, Quillian, and Azeen over the thesis. Ack! I think it will end up relying more heavily upon the critical chapters. Quillian thinks otherwise it will be too long and disjointed (before special big margins, it's 68 pages of critical work, and at least 30 of stories... seems kinda unwieldy). If I were starting this project over again, I'd nix the stories & go heavier into Marxist theory, weaving it into the close reading... If I had world enough and time... right?
Anyway, that's my news! It's been gorgeous out, which has been good for my mental health... I'm so glad to be going to CA next year... I never again want to live anywhere that requires one to wear pajama bottoms under one's pants just to stay warm in the winter!
Monday, April 11, 2005
I'm procrastinating from working on my Eng 319 paper, so I thought I'd post a blog entry. Had a super fun weekend, so, it's time for an update!
Friday: I ran into everyone (Karuna, Laura K, Laura E., Beth, etc) while walking around campus, and found out that Korisha's science symposium presentation was starting at a quarter to three in the afternoon. So until then, I read Stoppard's Indian Ink while sitting in Pratt Library. I didn't understand anything about Korisha's speech except that this flame retardant stuff could be put on a couch or something. We weren't brave enough to ask how you'd get the charred stuff off afterwards...
Anyway, then we had hoped to go on a picnic, but I didn't get back to my room till after Beth had called -- so unfortunately I missed out. Andrew got here at a decent hour, and we decided to take a run out to the liquor store in Chicopee. I'm slowly acquiring Andrew's taste in beer... Magic Hat, mainly. Anyway, then we attempted to watch Cold Mountain, but Andrew promptly fell asleep. Warning: If you haven't seen this movie or read the book, I might spoil the ending for you.
OK. So I found it supremely frustrating, the ending. I didn't sit through over 2 hours of Jude Law's character overcoming one impossible situation after another, somehow surviving everything, just to watch him get killed because he's freaking stupid and wanted to run up the side of the mountain looking for the bad guy without anyone backing him up. One does not get through all that crap without being extremely cautious -- so why would you take the guy one-on-one when your group outnumbers his (Georgia, the two girls, and the beat up father). I found that rather stupid. When Andrew woke up, groggy as hell for a shower, I told him that he's not allowed to ever run up a mountain after someone with a loaded gun. He nodded. Not sure if he really got that.
Another frustration with the movie: Whatever happened to complex characters? The bad guys are unbelievably bad -- they're beating up on old women, babies, children, killing people left and right. It seemed a tad too simplistic for me... Few people are all bad or all good, and the most interesting "bad guy" characters are like Shakespeare's Richard III -- people we can sympathize with (even just a tiny bit). Then Renee Z.'s character -- the classic tomboy "type" who has the easy-to-follow habit of listing everything. Nothing to figure out here -- she's the tough girl with heart. So, in conclusion, if I want a Civil War movie, I'm going back to Gone With the Wind.
Saturday I had an alum/ student luncheon, so Andrew sat by the lake making phone calls. It was quite fun (the luncheon) -- I spoke to an alum from class of like, 1948... she used to live in the Delles and loved it because she and her friends learned how to sneak in after hours. Two demerits and you were out! She also said something interesting about naked photos of students to see if their posture improved over the years... bizarre! My alum was a perfect match -- her mother (who had donated money that apparently was used toward my grants) and she were both English majors at MHC, and from the bay area. So she was glad to hear I'd be continuing on.
Then we went shopping -- I wanted a skirt, tank tops, & earrings. Found everything, and Andrew came upon the perfect birthday tote bag. Got out at a decent time... Then we coordinated with Korisha, Beth, Emily, & Kathleen for a trip out to Osaka. Sooo good... then Andrew & I went to Faces briefly, and then back to the dorm. Got ice cream at Blanchard (Andrew was pleasantly surprised), and then back in my room I read submissions for Verbosity while Andrew slept.
Sunday we went for brunch at the Roadside Cafe, which was, as usual, very yummy. Then we sat out on Amherst's town green for the entire afternoon (I got a bit pink, and Andrew had some burns). I did my reading, and wrote a poem while waiting for food at Fresh Side. A bit more shopping (I needed fun summer flip flops), and then we had dinner at Blanchard (I had gotten Trader Joe's sushi... nothing like Osaka's, but still better than dorm food). We had a pretty quick Verbosity meeting... Andrew and I went to Big Y... then we ate a whole tub of Chunky Monkey while watching DHs.
Today it was sunny, again, yay! Had a supremely frustrating Stoppard class (ARGH! Someone actually suggested that Stoppard basically has no right to have a female lead character due to the fact that he is a man). I dropped in on Kathleen's floor tea with the college president (amazing strawberries, that's all I have to say). The conversation pretty much centered upon dining halls, heating concerns, and the new dorm. ESB dinner was great fun -- we're trying to decide on next year's stuff, and I think we're going to try to have a grad school meeting in a couple of weeks.
Now, back to paper...!
Friday: I ran into everyone (Karuna, Laura K, Laura E., Beth, etc) while walking around campus, and found out that Korisha's science symposium presentation was starting at a quarter to three in the afternoon. So until then, I read Stoppard's Indian Ink while sitting in Pratt Library. I didn't understand anything about Korisha's speech except that this flame retardant stuff could be put on a couch or something. We weren't brave enough to ask how you'd get the charred stuff off afterwards...
Anyway, then we had hoped to go on a picnic, but I didn't get back to my room till after Beth had called -- so unfortunately I missed out. Andrew got here at a decent hour, and we decided to take a run out to the liquor store in Chicopee. I'm slowly acquiring Andrew's taste in beer... Magic Hat, mainly. Anyway, then we attempted to watch Cold Mountain, but Andrew promptly fell asleep. Warning: If you haven't seen this movie or read the book, I might spoil the ending for you.
OK. So I found it supremely frustrating, the ending. I didn't sit through over 2 hours of Jude Law's character overcoming one impossible situation after another, somehow surviving everything, just to watch him get killed because he's freaking stupid and wanted to run up the side of the mountain looking for the bad guy without anyone backing him up. One does not get through all that crap without being extremely cautious -- so why would you take the guy one-on-one when your group outnumbers his (Georgia, the two girls, and the beat up father). I found that rather stupid. When Andrew woke up, groggy as hell for a shower, I told him that he's not allowed to ever run up a mountain after someone with a loaded gun. He nodded. Not sure if he really got that.
Another frustration with the movie: Whatever happened to complex characters? The bad guys are unbelievably bad -- they're beating up on old women, babies, children, killing people left and right. It seemed a tad too simplistic for me... Few people are all bad or all good, and the most interesting "bad guy" characters are like Shakespeare's Richard III -- people we can sympathize with (even just a tiny bit). Then Renee Z.'s character -- the classic tomboy "type" who has the easy-to-follow habit of listing everything. Nothing to figure out here -- she's the tough girl with heart. So, in conclusion, if I want a Civil War movie, I'm going back to Gone With the Wind.
Saturday I had an alum/ student luncheon, so Andrew sat by the lake making phone calls. It was quite fun (the luncheon) -- I spoke to an alum from class of like, 1948... she used to live in the Delles and loved it because she and her friends learned how to sneak in after hours. Two demerits and you were out! She also said something interesting about naked photos of students to see if their posture improved over the years... bizarre! My alum was a perfect match -- her mother (who had donated money that apparently was used toward my grants) and she were both English majors at MHC, and from the bay area. So she was glad to hear I'd be continuing on.
Then we went shopping -- I wanted a skirt, tank tops, & earrings. Found everything, and Andrew came upon the perfect birthday tote bag. Got out at a decent time... Then we coordinated with Korisha, Beth, Emily, & Kathleen for a trip out to Osaka. Sooo good... then Andrew & I went to Faces briefly, and then back to the dorm. Got ice cream at Blanchard (Andrew was pleasantly surprised), and then back in my room I read submissions for Verbosity while Andrew slept.
Sunday we went for brunch at the Roadside Cafe, which was, as usual, very yummy. Then we sat out on Amherst's town green for the entire afternoon (I got a bit pink, and Andrew had some burns). I did my reading, and wrote a poem while waiting for food at Fresh Side. A bit more shopping (I needed fun summer flip flops), and then we had dinner at Blanchard (I had gotten Trader Joe's sushi... nothing like Osaka's, but still better than dorm food). We had a pretty quick Verbosity meeting... Andrew and I went to Big Y... then we ate a whole tub of Chunky Monkey while watching DHs.
Today it was sunny, again, yay! Had a supremely frustrating Stoppard class (ARGH! Someone actually suggested that Stoppard basically has no right to have a female lead character due to the fact that he is a man). I dropped in on Kathleen's floor tea with the college president (amazing strawberries, that's all I have to say). The conversation pretty much centered upon dining halls, heating concerns, and the new dorm. ESB dinner was great fun -- we're trying to decide on next year's stuff, and I think we're going to try to have a grad school meeting in a couple of weeks.
Now, back to paper...!
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Ahh I just entered a post and it all disappeared when I tried to load the page... error message... f*&#ing internet connection here!! So it's going to be a really, really brief rundown...
Last week: ESB hosted the Dept. tea, and it went swimmingly. We really took control and hosted it! Watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Weekend: D Becky's for The Incredibles, Laura's b day party (Eric Carle museum!), naps, Festival of Diversity (and the adorable prof of Laura's...who hugged me as I left & commented on how much I liked the curry), amazing brunch with Azeen, lots of work... sundae hall event & DHs
Week: David Sedaris with Andrew and then nachos (ahh food!), mentoring apps, felt rather sick today, good talks with Weber, Quillian & Ahmed about dept. tea shirts & Marxist criticism ... fun verse writing class with many tangential discussions... the OC...
Last week: ESB hosted the Dept. tea, and it went swimmingly. We really took control and hosted it! Watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Weekend: D Becky's for The Incredibles, Laura's b day party (Eric Carle museum!), naps, Festival of Diversity (and the adorable prof of Laura's...who hugged me as I left & commented on how much I liked the curry), amazing brunch with Azeen, lots of work... sundae hall event & DHs
Week: David Sedaris with Andrew and then nachos (ahh food!), mentoring apps, felt rather sick today, good talks with Weber, Quillian & Ahmed about dept. tea shirts & Marxist criticism ... fun verse writing class with many tangential discussions... the OC...
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
So... since I've been bugging Mer about updating more, I thought maybe I should update, too. Hmmm trying to remember what I've been doing...
I just had this weird moment of trying to figure out how long I've been back from spring break. The weekdays have been so so busy... very productive for the most part. Many mentoring meetings with the firsties in the English 101 class I'm mentoring....various SAW duties...lots o' schoolwork... a few quiet evenings trying to get work done.
Last week while I was at the Blanchard SAW table, I heard these two women talking to students about summer jobs. I went to an info. session after I found out that they have locations in both Madison & Ann Arbor. It's through Greenpeace/ Sierra Club/ State PIRGs. It's strange... not very good pay, unless you bring in a lot of money while going door to door talking to folks about environmental/political issues. After talking to people about it, I decided maybe it's not the best job to have... You basically go door to door in a city from 1 pm till 10 pm. Hell of a way to spend my nights, right? It was cool though because I was interviewing with the twin sister of this girl I knew my first year at MHC.
Then, the next day, I had an uber positive job experience. An alum posted to chat about freelance writing projects, and I emailed her with my resume and writing samples. Within two hours, I got a phone call, and my first project! So that's been incredible thus far, and I hope to continue doing this throughout the summer so I can stay with Andrew before grad school.
Weekend news update:
So Saturday I thought it would be a really good idea to go shopping for a white dress for the laurel parade. Um, no. Bad, bad idea. Andrew & I set off for Sylvester's for brunch, but I found out that the waiting time was 50 minutes, so we tried the Waitley Diner. Cool looking place, so-so food. I guess like any diner, they get most their dishes out of tin cans and TV dinner boxes. My hash browns were obviously the kind you can buy frozen in any supermarket. The cornbeef has was just as obviously straight out of a can. I was NOT impressed. Andrew liked his omlette though, and the trippy metallic/ mirrored interior was worth it.
Anyway, after that travesty of a brunch, we were on our way to the Holyoke Mall. Ahh... I found TONS of beautiful clothes, but very few nice white things... A strapless white dress at Charlotte Russe seemed promising, but a bit too formal, and they didn't have my size on the racks (and I wasn't looking forward to undressing a mannequin). Forever 21 had a cool hippie dippie white skirt, but Andrew agreed that it made my hips look bulgy. I found a cute skirt embroidered with flowers (in white thread, of course) at Old Navy, but I couldn't find any cute tops to match it ANYWHERE. Every top was either the wrong style, the wrong shade of white, or too risque to wear (ie, no lining in the bra area). The trip to Target was successful food-wise, but again, no white top to match my skirt.
So... after feeling completely let down and depressed about that, I tried on this white slip dress I've had since high school. It was sitting in my drawer, and I finally remembered to tell Andrew that I had one possible thing to wear. He was incredulous & confused as to why we had gone through the shopping debaucle. I thought it was too clingy to wear, but I've since talked to friends about it and they agree -- I should buy clothes I actually plan to wear after May 20, & just use the dress I have for the parade. So that's decided!!
Oh, I saw Word Wars, the documentary about professional scrabble players. Sooo good. GI Joel is awesome!
Sunday I brought Andrew to brunch at Prospect. He felt sick all afternoon/ evening, so we've agreed: no more dining hall food for him. Instead, I'm going to use my dining dollars the way they were intended to be used: on Chef Jeff cookies & chai! In the afternoon I finished my Tom Stoppard paper & we headed into Amherst for dinner stuffs & to return my Old Navy skirt. We ended up wanting to get sushi from Trader Joe's, so we didn't stay for coffee at Rao's... The weather's warming up so you can't use the car as a fridge =) We did get our coffeeshop time in though, as we went to the Thirsty Mind for drinks & a scrabble game before dinner. I beat Andrew, finally!!! 330 something to 240/50 something if I remember correctly. Upon arriving back to my dorm room, I found out that the Stoppard class was canceled, so that took the pressure off me to finish rereading The Invention of Love. Very nice feeling to realize that you can spend the evening with your shmoopy!
I insisted upon bringing our "picnic" dinner to the private dining room in the delles. It's a strange room... The wall paper is this antiquated white rose pattern on green, the curtains are long and billowy, a chandellier hangs over the table, and there's this dusty china cabinet sitting diagonally across a corner. On the shelves there are maybe two china platters and one teacup. And by the door there's one of those industrial yellow wheely mop buckets. It's a very odd room now that it's never used. I'm sure it'll be a quadruple dorm room in a year or two. So we ate there (Andrew refused to sit at opposite ends of the long rectangular table -- I thought it would have been funny, but he said no). Then, there was a great, great episode of Desperate Housewives... So addicted, and it's been so long since there was a new episode!!
Anyway... Monday was a catch up day, and a day of two mentoring apps gone awry (ie, no one showed up). Tuesday was busy with SAW duties... I had the table, reading, and small group. Today was nice... it's definitely spring now. 50 something degrees & sunny... I wore flip flops for the first time this year!! Ahh... sitting in the Stimson room during teatime, I realized I only have a few more such teas left at MHC... and tomorrow is the English dept tea that I've been organizing with the ESB, & all the underclasswomen will be hearing about the awesome courses being taught next year (ahhh Amy Martin is doing a seminar on class & gender in the Victorian novel -- how frustrating is that!?).
It's that nostalgic time when seniors are reflecting on their last spring here at MHC... this morning I was even thinking back to my visit to this campus as an admit, in the spring of '01... sometimes I try to reconcile my impression of this campus (from my first visit way back in the summer of 2000) with my current intimacy with its layout... ahh... I'll miss so much of it, but it's so time to move on... I can't wait to buy my own food (which I hope will be super healthy to make up for the past four years -- organic everything, free range chicken, milk from cows that weren't treated with antibiotics or hormones, etc.). I can hardly imagine showering without flip flops... I look forward to that, a lot... and not bringing a shower caddy everywhere... just having my shampoo there in the shower!! And going to the bathroom in the middle of the night without worrying about getting dressed... and controlling my own heat... but oh, there are those things you know you'll be nostalgic for later, too -- the campus here (especially in fall, spring, and early winter, during those first snowfalls), having friends to eat dinner with every night... the English dept. that I love... ahh!
Ahh!
I just had this weird moment of trying to figure out how long I've been back from spring break. The weekdays have been so so busy... very productive for the most part. Many mentoring meetings with the firsties in the English 101 class I'm mentoring....various SAW duties...lots o' schoolwork... a few quiet evenings trying to get work done.
Last week while I was at the Blanchard SAW table, I heard these two women talking to students about summer jobs. I went to an info. session after I found out that they have locations in both Madison & Ann Arbor. It's through Greenpeace/ Sierra Club/ State PIRGs. It's strange... not very good pay, unless you bring in a lot of money while going door to door talking to folks about environmental/political issues. After talking to people about it, I decided maybe it's not the best job to have... You basically go door to door in a city from 1 pm till 10 pm. Hell of a way to spend my nights, right? It was cool though because I was interviewing with the twin sister of this girl I knew my first year at MHC.
Then, the next day, I had an uber positive job experience. An alum posted to chat about freelance writing projects, and I emailed her with my resume and writing samples. Within two hours, I got a phone call, and my first project! So that's been incredible thus far, and I hope to continue doing this throughout the summer so I can stay with Andrew before grad school.
Weekend news update:
So Saturday I thought it would be a really good idea to go shopping for a white dress for the laurel parade. Um, no. Bad, bad idea. Andrew & I set off for Sylvester's for brunch, but I found out that the waiting time was 50 minutes, so we tried the Waitley Diner. Cool looking place, so-so food. I guess like any diner, they get most their dishes out of tin cans and TV dinner boxes. My hash browns were obviously the kind you can buy frozen in any supermarket. The cornbeef has was just as obviously straight out of a can. I was NOT impressed. Andrew liked his omlette though, and the trippy metallic/ mirrored interior was worth it.
Anyway, after that travesty of a brunch, we were on our way to the Holyoke Mall. Ahh... I found TONS of beautiful clothes, but very few nice white things... A strapless white dress at Charlotte Russe seemed promising, but a bit too formal, and they didn't have my size on the racks (and I wasn't looking forward to undressing a mannequin). Forever 21 had a cool hippie dippie white skirt, but Andrew agreed that it made my hips look bulgy. I found a cute skirt embroidered with flowers (in white thread, of course) at Old Navy, but I couldn't find any cute tops to match it ANYWHERE. Every top was either the wrong style, the wrong shade of white, or too risque to wear (ie, no lining in the bra area). The trip to Target was successful food-wise, but again, no white top to match my skirt.
So... after feeling completely let down and depressed about that, I tried on this white slip dress I've had since high school. It was sitting in my drawer, and I finally remembered to tell Andrew that I had one possible thing to wear. He was incredulous & confused as to why we had gone through the shopping debaucle. I thought it was too clingy to wear, but I've since talked to friends about it and they agree -- I should buy clothes I actually plan to wear after May 20, & just use the dress I have for the parade. So that's decided!!
Oh, I saw Word Wars, the documentary about professional scrabble players. Sooo good. GI Joel is awesome!
Sunday I brought Andrew to brunch at Prospect. He felt sick all afternoon/ evening, so we've agreed: no more dining hall food for him. Instead, I'm going to use my dining dollars the way they were intended to be used: on Chef Jeff cookies & chai! In the afternoon I finished my Tom Stoppard paper & we headed into Amherst for dinner stuffs & to return my Old Navy skirt. We ended up wanting to get sushi from Trader Joe's, so we didn't stay for coffee at Rao's... The weather's warming up so you can't use the car as a fridge =) We did get our coffeeshop time in though, as we went to the Thirsty Mind for drinks & a scrabble game before dinner. I beat Andrew, finally!!! 330 something to 240/50 something if I remember correctly. Upon arriving back to my dorm room, I found out that the Stoppard class was canceled, so that took the pressure off me to finish rereading The Invention of Love. Very nice feeling to realize that you can spend the evening with your shmoopy!
I insisted upon bringing our "picnic" dinner to the private dining room in the delles. It's a strange room... The wall paper is this antiquated white rose pattern on green, the curtains are long and billowy, a chandellier hangs over the table, and there's this dusty china cabinet sitting diagonally across a corner. On the shelves there are maybe two china platters and one teacup. And by the door there's one of those industrial yellow wheely mop buckets. It's a very odd room now that it's never used. I'm sure it'll be a quadruple dorm room in a year or two. So we ate there (Andrew refused to sit at opposite ends of the long rectangular table -- I thought it would have been funny, but he said no). Then, there was a great, great episode of Desperate Housewives... So addicted, and it's been so long since there was a new episode!!
Anyway... Monday was a catch up day, and a day of two mentoring apps gone awry (ie, no one showed up). Tuesday was busy with SAW duties... I had the table, reading, and small group. Today was nice... it's definitely spring now. 50 something degrees & sunny... I wore flip flops for the first time this year!! Ahh... sitting in the Stimson room during teatime, I realized I only have a few more such teas left at MHC... and tomorrow is the English dept tea that I've been organizing with the ESB, & all the underclasswomen will be hearing about the awesome courses being taught next year (ahhh Amy Martin is doing a seminar on class & gender in the Victorian novel -- how frustrating is that!?).
It's that nostalgic time when seniors are reflecting on their last spring here at MHC... this morning I was even thinking back to my visit to this campus as an admit, in the spring of '01... sometimes I try to reconcile my impression of this campus (from my first visit way back in the summer of 2000) with my current intimacy with its layout... ahh... I'll miss so much of it, but it's so time to move on... I can't wait to buy my own food (which I hope will be super healthy to make up for the past four years -- organic everything, free range chicken, milk from cows that weren't treated with antibiotics or hormones, etc.). I can hardly imagine showering without flip flops... I look forward to that, a lot... and not bringing a shower caddy everywhere... just having my shampoo there in the shower!! And going to the bathroom in the middle of the night without worrying about getting dressed... and controlling my own heat... but oh, there are those things you know you'll be nostalgic for later, too -- the campus here (especially in fall, spring, and early winter, during those first snowfalls), having friends to eat dinner with every night... the English dept. that I love... ahh!
Ahh!
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