New things

I finally bought a dresser off of the magical Craig's List.  It's pretty fabulous.  Notice how perfectly my TV fits on top of it.  It will still rotate so that I can view it from every room.  It's from Ikea originally and it looks (and smells) brand new.  The guy said he'd only had it for a few months.  It matches the desk I bought from Ikea perfectly.  My favorite part was arranging all of my clothes inside it, of course.  My least favorite part was carrying it up the three flights of stairs - one handed no less.  Yeah, I'm totally ripped.  

I also had to get a new keyboard.  I spilled water on my cute apple keyboard.  Though my friend claims that you can put those things through the dishwasher, mine crapped out at the first drop.  At first I noticed that the bottom three numbers on my keypad weren't working, which would be no problem for me, but a little later the space bar stopped working.  That key is a little more crucial.  As I have a big paper due next week, I decided I needed to replace it right away.  The new one is so ugly, isn't it?  It was the cheapest Best Buy had.  At least it kind of blends into the desk.  It also has nice key action.  It'll do until I get a laptop.  

I just bought a ticket for...

I'm so excited!  They are playing at the Paramount theater downtown, which is apparently super cool and old.  I figure I should go to some concerts while I'm here in Austin because who knows if I'll get another chance?   I know I can't really afford it, but I got a cheap seat way up in the middle of the balcony against the wall.  I hope I will be able to see from there.  They wouldn't have seats where you can't see, would they?  Regardless, I am excited.  I absolutely love the Magnetic Fields.  They are definitely in contention for being my favorite band of all time.  My friend and her boyfriend have tickets (in the center orchestra, row 8 - jealous!) so we're going to make it an evening together.  If I can sneak in my camera, I will post some pictures here.  It's not until October 14th, but I will be excited every day until then!  I just wish that Dan could go with me...

My poor feets!

I hate this stupid humid Texas weather!  It makes you blister like none other.  I wore the sandals I always wear and did a bit more walking/spending time outside than usual and now they have blisters and are sore on the bottoms.  What the heck?  There's no way I can wear socks and sneakers in this hot weather, though.  If I wore socks and shoes, I would have to wear pants - I mean, I'm not a guy.  That's just too much heat and sweating for me.  So you must suffer with me by looking at my skanky feet.  

In other news, I am SUPER excited about the season premiere of The Office this Thursday!  My new best friend and I are going to watch it and freak out.  I may have to cut a meeting short with a group from one of my classes, but they can just deal with it.  I have my priorities.  

PS - Informal Poll:  Which is better - an English accent or an Australian accent?

Almost dinner #1

Is it bad that a lot of my posts have something to do with food?  It's not like that is all I think about.  It is a big part of my life - Americans spend an average of 67 minutes eating and drinking as a "primary" activity according to the American Time Use Survey of 2006.  It doesn't seem like a lot - but if you factor in food preparation, going to the grocery store, making grocery lists and fantasizing about McDonald's, that's a lot of time.  

Regardless, I really enjoyed my dinner tonight.  Mostly because making, consuming and cleaning up gave me a big break from homework.  I have a ridiculous amount of work to do this weekend.  Most of that work involves my first real paper for graduate school.  I'm kind of freaking out because it's math-based and I haven't taken a math class in 6 years.  I did make some pretty cool graphs and tables, though.  I think the hard part is over and the rest is just analytical, but I won't know if I did OK until I get it back.  While freaking out initially I kept thinking that if this was what all the grad school papers will be like, then maybe I'm not really ready for it.  I don't think they will all be this difficult.  The biggest problem was that he only gave us one weeks notice and expected us to already know how to run the programs and do the math.  Which of course I did not.  Also, it was "partner optional" and of course I did not want a partner.  Oh well, I'll get through it.  

As for the photo and post title, dinner number one in my family consisted of baked chicken, baked potato and "shapes" (those frozen mixed veggies where carrots are in cubes, peas and corn in spheres and green beans in cylinders.)  It was called dinner #1 because we had it once a week and it was the general favorite.  My dinner tonight was pan-fried chicken, mashed potatoes and just plain old peas.  It kind of felt like dinner #1 though, and it was delicious.  

A good day

It was a beautiful day today.  I think the sun has too much power here.  When it shines on you, it feels like it's going to melt your skin.  In Iowa it's just sunlight - you can feel it on you, it's warm, but it's just the sun.  The sun was not shining today, it was cool, breezy and lovely.  I even opened the windows.  It's very refreshing - and my electric bill will be a bit slimmer.  It also makes me quite happy.  My coworkers said that this is a freak of weather for this time of year, but I have hope.   

Yes, that picture is of a half-gallon of organic milk from Central Market.  I have never had organic milk before.  I can see my parents making "ew" faces right now.  It actually tasted pretty much the same as regular milk.  In fact, I couldn't tell the difference at all - except the 50 cents more I spent on it.  I just thought I'd give it a try.  I mean, I'm living in Austin surrounded by health nuts, I may as well try it out for myself.  

Two things, both kind of disappointing

There was big talk of a hurricane.  I did not see one drop of rain today - though there were winds and threatening looking clouds.  It was hyped up so much, even the football game was postponed, and then did not deliver.  Now, I don't want to sound like a horrible person - I know there was tons of damage in Houston and Galveston and the like.  I am not glad about that.  I was just hoping for some rain or an exciting thunderstorm or something.  I've only witnessed it raining three times since I've been here, and only one of those was a thunderstorm.  I miss them.  In Iowa it seemed to thunderstorm every other week during the summer.  Oh well.  

I also worked on a book today.  I am in need of some plain colored paper.  All the bookbinding cover and end paper I have has some sort of pattern and most of them are quite bold.  Mixing them is difficult.  I'll post a picture of it when I am done.  The cover boards are gluing.  It's going to take them a while to dry, so I may not finish tomorrow.  Don't worry, it will be soon.  For now, here's a picture of me in my "bookmaking apron."  

Crisis

Would life be any fun without a daily crisis?  I came home from class today as usual and sat down at my computer with a snack and a glass of water.  I was minding my business, checking my email when my cat jumped in my lap.  He meowed a few times and kept staring up at the corner of the ceiling.  I looked up and to my horror saw a gynormous cockroach.  

After my initial freak out, I made a few calls for moral support - and took some pictures, of course.  After about 20 minutes of attempting to kill it (which involved moving some furniture and high pitched squealing noises) I realized what a wuss I am.  I am a big fat baby.  I can't believe that I am unable to kill a bug.  Though the bug happened to be a two inch long cockroach.  It looks like one of those fake joke cockroaches, doesn't it?  Regardless, I am a grown woman, I should have the balls to take my shoe and squish it.  So I did.  I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight, but by god I can kill a cockroach.  

On a side note, Hatshepsut (the gray cat) was totally obsessed with it.  She wanted it.  She sat on my desk looking up at it making little kitty war noises.  I'm pretty sure she was the one who got it up there in the first place.  My closet was a mess - the cats had knocked a bunch of stuff over.  Besides, why else would a cockroach that big be up in the corner of the bedroom in the middle of the day?  She had that thing on the run!  

Do you remember?

Do you remember when pictures were actual pictures?  When they weren't digital?  It was an easier time then.  You only took twelve to thirty-six at a time and they had to be "good" or it was a waste of film.  Now you can shoot willy-nilly and take as many pictures of your cat or your baby as you want to.  What does that give you?  A thousand OK pictures of your cat and ten good ones.  Can you find those good ones after you've uploaded them onto your computer?  Not easily.  Can't you just delete the bad ones while they are still on your camera?  Sure, if you want to go through each of the thousand pictures and press "delete" and "confirm" for each bad one.  Besides, why delete them?  Aren't they perfectly good pictures?  It's a crisis.  

Don't get me wrong, I really like digital pictures.  You can edit them to make them look better and, I'll admit, taking a thousand pictures will give you a better chance of getting a good one.  I'm just disgruntled because I've been reading "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger.  His solution to too much information is more information.  It's pretty genius.  If you want to organize the thousands of photos in your album, you have to add metadata (information about information) to them.  Add descriptive terms to your photos so you can search them easier.  That way, if I'm looking for that picture of the Chicago skyline that I took when my boyfriend and I went there last April I can type in "Chicago" or "Chicago" and "April 2008" and there it is.  Easy.  At least, it seems easy until I realize I have to add two to five words to all of my thousand pictures.  

I want my film camera back.  

Experiment

I'm sorry to subject you guys to this image, but there is a purpose.  I've decided I need to whiten my teeth.  I've wanted to for a while - I had a friend in dental school who was supposed to hook me up with something cheap, but it fell through.  Instead, I bought myself two weeks of Listerine Quick Dissolving Strips.  You put these little plastic-ish things on your top and bottom teeth twice a day and they dissolve in your mouth.  It's more of a foam/melt than a dissolve - and you get to swallow it the entire 5 to 10 minutes.  It's a bit gross, but minty.  

In two weeks when I'm done, I will take another picture in the same lighting and we will judge the effectiveness.  I hope they work!  

PS - Is it just me, or do I look a lot like my Mom when I make this face?  

A visit to the Harry Ransom Center

I met a friend from iSchool for lunch at Veggie Heaven today.  For those of you who don't know, it's a popular vegan restaurant right across from campus that serves cheap, mostly Asian food.  I had the "Open Sesame" which was noodles and veggies in a "brown sauce."  It was quite good.  After lunch we walked over to the Harry Ransom center to see the drawing exhibit - and the Gutenberg (pictured above) of course.  It was pretty magical.  The drawing exhibit was quite large, it was all we could take today.  I would like to visit their library and maybe hint at an internship for the summer.  There were some very cool drawings on display.  I liked one in particular that Salvador Dali did on the title page of a book.  It was a self portrait with his eye as a drawer opening out of his head.  There was an entire display of travel sketchbooks, which immediately made me think of my parents.  They always take a "trip book" to write and draw in when they go on vacation.  One of the books on display had full page watercolors on most of the pages.  On the whole I thought it was pretty cool.  I will have to explore that place a lot more.  

On a side note, I found Media Services on campus and checked out "Gone with the Wind" on DVD.  I feel like that's one of the movies I should watch.  Two of the drawings on display were costume designs for the movie.  Did you know that after the Bible, "Gone with the Wind" is the best selling book in the world?  It is followed closely by "The Little Prince."  

Guess what I got in the mail today...

The Office Season 4!  I have been waiting for this for so long.  I prepared by watching the three previous seasons in a row.  I'm going to try to limit myself to three episodes per day - saving the last disk for this weekend.  After that I have to mail it to my boyfriend, who is also pretty obsessed with that show.  I think he's less obsessed than me though.  I can get pretty freaky about TV shows.  

In other news, I had another new class today.  This one is about the organization of information.  Reading the syllabus online was a little intimidating - and kind of made the professor seem like a douche.  But, after meeting him and getting a better idea of the class I think it will be fine.  It's going to be challenging but worth it.  That's kind of how I feel about the other classes I've had.  I guess that is what graduate school is all about.  You work hard but the payoff is worth it.  Do I sound too PBS special?  I guess not when I use the word "douche."