It's over!!!!

Well folks, it's November 30th and you know what that means...I don't have to post tomorrow! Nablopomo is officially over at midnight tonight, and then I can post whenever I damn well please. Not that I don't love filling you in on my business, internets, but November is the least-interesting of months. For reals.

Since I ran out of funny stories (on, like, the 3rd), I've resorted to talking about my hair, my classes, my produce purchases, my obsession with smarmy fictional opponents, my computer, a movie I watched, my computer again, my produce purchases again (?), my boots, my eating habits, the weather, and my sister in various capacities, including her longness of hair and her general uselessness.

Alls that to say that I have two papers to write and four finals to study for, so you might not be hearing from me for a few days. That's a lie. I'm totally playing fake-mommy (i.e. babysitting) tomorrow, and I'm definitely going to tell you all about it. And then I'm going to post the kickass paper I'm writing on Frankenstein. Freaky business, people.

Because I let people tell me how to blog now.

Bekah insisted that I post this picture she took of my ass because it looks three miles wide, and my legs look like sticks.
So I did. But because this is my blog, and I never want to look ugly-assed alone, here is a picture of hers. It looks like a dude's.

I have to do this...

...because Jane said so.

Wrapping paper or gift bag?

Totally gift bag. The 20-second present-wrap. And then the person keeps the bag, and next Christmas your gift comes in it. Good for the environment.

Real tree or artificial?

For those of you who don't read Jane's blog, I'd just like to quote her answer here: 'Real. Just like my boobs.'

This is not a statement on the veracity of my girls, but artificial. We had the same awesome fake tree until about five years ago, and now we (my parents) have an awesomer fake tree. Joel and I have this darling little Walmart special...

...also fake. And tiny.

When do you put up your tree?

We always did it on Thanksgiving, back when Thanksgiving was in late November (read: when we were American). My knee-high guy went up yesterday.

When do you take down your tree?

Never did. That was Mom's job. I guess I'm the woman of the house now, though, and it'll be my responsibility to de-ball the tree and fold it gently back into its box, like a prickly, synthetic child.

Do you like eggnog?

Only if that eggnog is accompanied by Robyn, and rum. Robyn? You, me, rumnogs?

Favorite gift as a child?

This Fisher Price little kitchen with fake food (I got two of the same fake-food set in the same Christmas, so I had, like, eight slices of fake bread to put in my fake toaster).

Do you have a nativity scene?

Not yet. I figure if I add one new element each Christmas, I wont feel like I'm spending arms and legs on decorations.

Hardest person to buy for?

My dad. We've bought him every trinket out of the Mini Cooper store. What now?

Easiest person to buy for?

My sister. I'd link to the thing I want to buy for her this year, except that she reads this blog. Remind me to tell you later.

Worst Christmas gift you've ever received?

Alarm clock. Enough said.

Mail or email Christmas cards?

Definitely mail. Not that I will. Just that I would prefer to have cards mailed to me.

Favorite Christmas movie?

The Grinch. The cartoon one.

When do you start shopping for Christmas gifts?

When I finish my last final.

Have you ever recycled a Christmas gift?

Something I got from a Red Robin gift exchange is making it into the white elephant exchange this year. No real gifts, though.

Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?

Baking. LOTS of baking.

White or colored lights?

This question is so racist.

Favorite Christmas song?

Oh Holy Night. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall on your kneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeear the angel vooooooooooooooooooooices, oh NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiight deviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. What's not to love?

Travel for Christmas or stay at home?

I would dearly love to spend at least one day at home, in my pajamas. Please let that happen.

Can you name all of Santa's reindeers?

I like that 'reindeers' is pluralized with an 's.' And yes I can name them all, because I have the internets.

Angel or star at the top of the tree?

My mom has a little crow atop hers. I love him. Mine has a star.

Open presents Christmas Eve or morning?

Hmmm. What with this whole married thing, all our traditions are turning on their heads. We always did Christmas morning...get up, have a coffee and a muffin, sit around the tree and watch each person open their gifts, one at a time. Now...I guess we'll see.

Most annoying thing about this time of year?

That everyone can't adjust their schedules to suit me. Because it's all about me, right?

What I love most about Christmas...

How, beforehand you think you're so busy, and then all the preparations are done and it's just a lot of sitting around and visiting and eating and visiting some more and napping on the couch because you have nothing pressing to do.

The Lighting of the Tree, or Two of Us Are Useless

Last weekend I went to my parents' place in Burnaby. My sister's boyfriend Darren came over to help us set up the tree and then watch back-to-back episodes of What Not to Wear. We like him.


Part of what we like about Darren is that when I say 'help us set up,' I mean 'help my mom set up so that my sister and I can run around like idiots.'


Observe.

Darren working. Bekah not working.

Darren still working. Me not working.

Darren pausing to show off his work. Bekah continuing to not work.

Darren subtly working. Me overtly not working.

Mom joining in because she realizes that only one of the three is working. Bekah not working.

Mom noticing Bekah not working. We call that the 'hairy eyeball,' folks.

Me supervising while mom works.

Darren working. Bekah not doing a single thing to validate her presence in this picture, but needing to be in it anyways.Me also in a picture that I have no business being in. Darren continues to work.

And the moral of the story is...tall = usefull. Also, I like gingersnaps.

Winter has come!!! It's finally here!!!

So, I get out of my afternoon class early, and I'm trudging home at around 4:30 in the pouring rain, griping and grumbling about how much I hate the pouring rain and how stupid fall is, and then I go home and polish up my paper and have a little nap and eat some soup and put my boots back on and head out the door and hey! What is this?

Is that rain, that heavy mist you see falling? NO! Allow me to clarify for those of you not living in the beautiful Fraser Valley....

It is snow!!! Big fat flakes of snow!!! And it's sticking, and with any luck it'll snow four feet overnight, and when I wake up tomorrow, I won't have to go to class because it will have snowed too much for me to WALK THE SIX BLOCKS TO SCHOOL!!!

Hello peaches. I'm doing it again. The desktop that I've been hoo.king my laptop up to so that I can see what I'm doing...it a splode. So I'm typing in the dark. Joel's on the other computer, doing 'real work,' ans I was just about to head off to bed when I realized that I hadn't given you your daily dose of my desperate postings. November is the worst month for nablopomo what with all the finals I have and all the papers I'mw riting and all the not-interesting I'm doing. But december will be here soon, and then I'll go back to only posting when I have funny things to tell you. This is dumb. I'm going to bed.

Hoooooooome, home on the range...

...where the deeeeer and the antelope graze!

Things that I grazed while paper-writing at my parents' house today:

- a bowl of expensive luxury cereal

- several string cheeses

- most of a bag of all-dressed ripple chips

- a bag of dry, tasteless 100-calorie popcorn

- a bag of salty, delicious jalepeno-flavored popcorn

- a handful of chocolate-covered almonds

- a cup of expensive luxury coffee

- a small mountain of real fruit gummies

- a larger mountain of wine gums

- a hunk of a Lindt chocolate bar

- several gummi frogs (made with real fruit juice)

- a Christmas orange I found on the porch

- a tums

As good an excuse as any.

I've decided I can't write this paper. I heard that thinking shrinks your ovaries.

Sometimes, I just don't need your help.

I think it was on the plane to Thailand that I watched 'Failure to Launch.' No, that's when I watched 'Jaws,' and woke up the kindly Mexican next to me when I screamed. Sharks are scary.

At any rate, some time in the last five years, I saw 'Failure to Launch' on a plane. I forget the exact premise...something about this guy who needs a girlfriend so his parents hire that girl from Sex in the City to lure him out of his bachelorhood, and she's outlining her plan to someone and it goes along the lines of '...bla bla bla, and then I let him teach me something, bla bla bla' because guys like to teach girls things, and letting them do so makes them feel more competent and manly.

Joel likes to teach me things, and is forever explaining scientific concepts to me. I actually mostly like it, because I am a nerd, and because, in return, he lets me expand his vocabulary for him. By the time we have grandkids, I will be a mad scientist, and he will be a thesaurus. It will be awesome.

However, if it isn't your husband or boyfriend or four-year-old nephew or a guy whose parents have hired you to seduce him, this trait is more irritating than fun. So this guy today tries to explain to me what is wrong with my laptop screen, based on what he has observed from a distance (i.e. the screen does not work). The hell do I care what is wrong with the screen? I'm not going to let him try to fix it. I'm not going to fix it. Why are we having this conversation, and why don't I have any chips, because really, that's the relevant issue here.

Dumber than I should be.

What's this now? If I wont give you a real post, I should at least tell you how I deleted three pages of a paper I was working on the day before it was due? Very well, internets, but only because I love you.

So, we have these two computers, see? But one of them, it's not a real computer. It's just a desktop monitor hooked up to my laptop, because the screen on my laptop is kaput. So I have to sit on the ground, with my laptop in my lap, and look up and to my left at the monitor, which is on a low table. This is hard on my neck.

Joel usually works on the desktop (the one without the laptop attached to it), but when he's not, I like to email my assignment and all relevant notes to myself, and then move to the desktop and check my email and then work there until Joel comes back, and I have to switch back to the laptop/monitor/neck-hurter. This results in me having several copies of any given assignment, all in various stages of process, and all named the same thing because I'm too dumb to, like, number them or something.

So the other day, I emailed myself the paper, and then headed over to the desktop and instead of 'Open this file' which I usually do, resulting in a new copy of said paper, I just saved it over the older copy on the desktop. Turns out, I had mailed the wrong copy to myself, and saved an older copy over a newer copy, losing several hours worth of strenuous work.

And no, the newer copy wasn't still on my laptop and I don't know how that happened and don't ask me these things, I'm a dolt. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a midterm in three hours.

The best I can do.

What's that, you say? Yous alls want a proper post, with deep thoughts and witty sayings and funny stories about how I always think I'm pregnant (I don't any more, but those were a rough couple of months)?

I made buns today.

Because I know you want to know.

If you want to know how my boots are doing, they're awesome. I stomped through every bit of inclement ground on the way to and from and to and from school today.

If you want to know how my assignments are coming, they're lousy. I just lost three pages because I am an idiot, and I don't really care to explain how, because now I have to go rewrite them.

If you want to know how many brain cells I have, you can come count them. They're lying in a puddle on the floor beside me.

If you want to know anything else, you'll have to wait until I'm done tearing out my hair.

Fly safe

Yesterday, Joel and I took a homework break to watch 'Alive,' that movie about the rugby team that crashes in the Andes and ends up eating their dead teammates. You know the one. A very young Ethan Hawke is in it.

Anyway, there's this one sweet older couple (older as in '...than the early-twenties rugby players') and they're always cradling each other and looking to each other for support and whatall, and then there's an avalanche and the woman dies and the man is heartbroken. At this point, Joel turns to me and says, 'If I'm ever plane-crashed into the Andes, I hope you're not there.' He paused, and I waited for something along the lines of how he would want to know that I was home safe, or that he wouldn't want me to suffer like that, or how at least then someone would be able to care for our children, or something, but no. 'You're an icicle,' he says. 'You would forever be putting your cold feet on me.'

What to do with the rest of today's afternoon...

I headed into Burnaby today so that my daddy could take my computer apart and replace the fan, and take a stab at fixing the screen. No dice on the screen, but the fan is blessedly silent.

Since I was in town, Bekah and I had a sister-day. We both have major assignments to do, but some things are more important than schoolwork. Like hair. Remember how I had long hair, that one time?

Well, my sister had long hair, too.

It was nuts, really. And kind of ratty at the top, because it was too long for brushing. And what does one do with long hair? One cuts it off.

Choppy choppy! I was there, of course, for moral support. And to document it on film. And to suggest that she keep the straggly ends (she vetoed).

Now she looks fabulous. See? How cute.



Now, one does not public transit one's way all the way downtown unless one has errands (multiple) to run. I have been tromping to and from school in my summer shoes for the past few months, in the rain, running the risk of pneumonia, all because I refuse to wear real, sock-friendly shoes. I will, however, wear moonboots. My sister has a pair of moonboots that I've coveted for ages, but the Army and Navy only had them in a size six, which I am not. Instead, I got these rockawesome bad boys.


Business on the bottom, skinned-muppet on the top. I know, they make my calves look monstrous, but I couldn't tuck my pant-leg all the way in, because they were soaked around the ankle, and I wanted to wear them immediately. My feet were wet and cold, and so as soon as we got to the bus stop, I handed the umbrella to my sister and proceeded to change shoes on the street. Except that after I dragged my ski-sock onto my soggy foot, I realized that the boots were still attached to each other, and by an elastic thing, not a thing you could snap with your hands, so I had to hop around on the one foot while I rummaged in my purse for my keys and tried not to put that foot on the puddly ground and tried to stay under the umbrella, and then when I got the boots apart, I had to wring out my jean-bottoms because they were too soaked to even think about putting them in shoes, and I was bent over trying to lace and tie up my boot and my fingers kept getting stuck in the fur, and my sister would reach over and try to pull my shirt over my exposed crack without dropping the umbrella and my purse, and then my second boot fell over and the fur on one side got soaked and matted, and the bus was due to come any second, and I was convinced it would roaring around the corner just as I was be-socked and unshod, but I got both boots on and the laces jammed into the tops for later tying, and we were asked by a man in a wheelchair if we liked art, and if we wanted our pictures drawn, and if we had any paper he could draw us on (because he didn't), and did we have any spare change, all before the bus came. Whew.

So now, with our similar hair-lengths, and our matching moonboots, we look like sisters, no?

And that is the story of what I did today. Also, we put a scarf on the dog.

And my brother fell asleep while checking his watch.

Scurvy-free since 1982

A week or so ago, I bought my first Christmas orange of the season. Today, I bought a whole delicious box.

Let the Eating-of-Whole-Delicious-Boxes-by-Myself-in-the-Six-Days-Before-They-Go-Bad-Because-Joel-Doesn't-Eat-Citrus-or-Even-Fruit-Really commence!

mayday

My computer screen has gone black, and I am blogging blind. I know that things are working, because I took notes in my class like this this morning, trusting to my typing skills. This is the worst possible time for this to happen. Joel has a paper due, and needs the compute for his research and paper-writing. I have three papers coming up (I want to backspace and tye'four' papers, beacuse I just rmeembered another one, but I can't see to backspace). I'm bringing my computer in to my daddy on Saturday...if he can't fix it, I'm doomed. This is ridiculous. Good thing I know how many 'tabs' it is until 'Publish Post'

I'm pulling rank. Do this now.

I have spent very few moments of the past week or so doing things that I actually wanted to do. I have had a lot of dry, tedious moments, and a very meagre amount of amusing moments. HowEVER, I spent a good two hours on Monday laughing myself into a state, and I would like to pass along that privilege to you. See this movie:



I'm not even going to play it up for you. I keep trying to describe it to people, but you all know how that goes. You have to go and see it, and then you have to find other people who have seen it (you can come talk to me), and then you have to talk about how you nearly killed yourself laughing, and then one of you has to say 'He's appointed himself judge, jury and executioner' so that the other one of you can say 'But he's NOT Judge Judy and executioner!' and then you will both laugh. I hope I haven't ruined that one line for you. Please go watch this before I ruin the part where the one lady hits the other lady in the face with a wet-floor sign. Like, right in the teeth.

An early Christmas present, from me to you. It's a blog of more than 100 words.

Ok, since I thought I had a huge assignment due on Thursday but I just remembered this morning that it wasn't due til next Tuesday (and I almost wept, I was so relieved) and I just phoned a friend to ask a question about our lab which is due tomorrow, and also to say '...and jeez, how about that midterm tomorrow, hey?' so that she could say 'You're a dimwit, the midterm got moved to next Wednesday, and you know that,' since I now have neither of these things in the next two days, I will now give you a real blog, one that doesn't involve my cervix.

Acutally, I'm just blogging to let you know that my computer woes have reached new heights. The screen on my laptop has gone a very dark shade of grey. So dark, in fact, that you'd think it was black if you couldn't just faintly make out the words on the screen which I am currently typing. Don't worry, I'm not straining my eyes in my endeavors to amuse. I have, instead, hooked the laptop up to the desktop monitor, so that I can sit here with the laptop in my lap, using the laptop keyboard and the laptop mouse and looking at the desktop screen LIKE AN IDIOT!!! It feels like I'm trying to knit a sweater while watching TV, without looking down. I'd take a picture of myself, but the camera-to-computer-picture-loader-cord is hooked up to the tower, which is currently unattached, dark, and forlorn.

(Side story: One time, at camp, me and my cabin of eight-year-olds were standing in our line-up, waiting to be called in for lunch. Trying to garner a little pity, I turned to them and said, 'Alright girls, everyone line up straight and look forlorn,' to which my best and brightest replied, 'Who's Lorn?')

This whole laptop-screen-going-so-dark-it's-nearly-black thing happened on Sunday, as I was sitting down to an assignment I didn't want to do (namely, defining a list of Romantic-era terms). After a morning of cramps and nausea, and two full days of wretched defining to do, this did me in. I wept and gnashed my teeth and wrung my hands, certain no one had ever been as hard done by as I. After much toil, I got everything rigged up to go on the desktop and re-opened my assignment to the definition I had been working on when I shut down Saturday night, and which I now present for you...

Sensibility: the tendency to give one's self entirely over to one's emotions, and to be highly succeptible to minute instances of pleasure or pain.

'Ahhh, you,' I said to myself, chuckling. 'Do the assignment, don't live the assignment.'

As another aside, and as September said earlier today, the fabulous, witty, brilliant, emminently hospitable, charming and unbelievably strong Jane has been having a bit of a rough go of things lately, what with her father's Alzheimer's diagnosis and her mother's sudden need for emergency surgery and her church's dissolution and her three growing boys and, well, let's just say that I'm not all that hard done by, and that if you have a few extra prayers hanging around, you might want to send them her way.

Cheers, all. Tomorrow I will return to my NaBloPoMo/crazy-paper-rush-induced sound-byte-blogging.

(This post was brought to you by the dash - - -)

X-Rated

Warning: This blog references my cervix. There. Now none of you can TMI me in the comments, because I warned you, and you read it anyways.

I'm being blackmailed by my doctor. I need my perscription renewed for my birth control pills, and he says he'll give me another three months, but that I have to schedule a pap smear in that time, or I'm cut off. Those are my options: either have my cervix scraped with a little spoon, or get accidentally pregnant. I can't decide which appalls me more.

Sage advice

I walk into the living room where Joel is sitting in his ugly, too-small red hoodie and elastic-ankle sweats, playing video games.

'Ha! You look like a hobo.'

He looks over, takes in my greasy ponytail, baggy t-shirt and sweats and undone bathrobe with the cranberry stain, and says simply 'Judge not, my dear, lest ye be judged.'

A brief interruption

I'm not even kidding, people. Let's all write some really long blog posts so that I can read them. I'll start....






Just jokes. I'm getting back to work now.

The weather is lousy. Won't you please amuse me?

The awesome thing about doing assignments during the week is that everyone is Facebooking and blogging and giving me intermittant breaks from my homework stew.

The crappy thing about blogging on a Sunday afternoon is that everyone is napping, or Sunday-driving, or family-lunching, and no one is around to play Facebook Scrabble with me.

I am barely more productive, and waaaaaaaaay more irritable.

There's pain, and then there's Motrin

I was going to try to think of something hilarious to tell you tonight, but I have this massive headache, and I've been working on an assignment since we got home three hours ago, and making no headway.

Does anyone want to define some literary terms in light of what they meant to the romantic period? No? What if I made you some cookies? Christmas cookies?

I put a Christmas tree up on my Facebook. Feel free to put presents under it.

The semester ends in less than a month. Exactly thirty days from today, I will be writing my third of four finals.

Then I will eat gingerbread and watch films in my robe. All day.

This is stupid. I'm going to bed, y'alls.

We're both the needy one.

Ok, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that my sister and I are BFF's and that we phone each other, like, eight times a day, but I'm not going to search through my whole blog just so I can link to that time I mentioned it, so let me mention it again.

My sister and I - by virtue of the womb we shared, and also due to the hours we spent waiting for the bus in hours so early that it was STILL DARK OUT, and all the times we ran for the phantom bus only to get to the stop, huffing and puffing and sweating in our winter jackets, to see a truck, or something, climbing the hill - are BFF's and we phone each other, like, eight times a day.

Ok, maybe not that many. But she'll phone me on the bus on the way home, and I'll phone her as I'm walking to school, and if the other person doesn't answer, the person phoning will just leave a message which usually begins with the phrase 'Nothing funny to report...just calling,' as though we had to make excuse for the fact that we have no hilarious stories. Unless the reason we're phoning is because we have a hilarious story, in which case the message begins with 'You will not believe what I just saw/did/knocked over/said in public.'

So, the other week, I'd phoned my sister a number of times, always getting her machine or getting her at an awkward time when she couldn't talk, and she'd been to busy to phone me back, and I was starting to feel like the needy girlfriend who always phones to see what her boyfriend is up to and does he want to come over and watch a movie?

This past week, I've been mad busy, and haven't had time to return the past three or four of my sister's calls. Today I got a message from her saying, 'Sometimes, when I phone you and then you don't phone me back, and then I phone you again the next day, I feel a bit creepy and stalkerish.'

I phoned her instantly to tell her that it's ok, that we're both the desperate, clingy one.

It's time for a Jeo-party!!!

Ok, because I apparently have tons of time on my hands, despite the paper-tsunami that's going to hit any minute, I was reading this post which led me to this post about how much this girl hates this DeBeers ad. Not so much how she hates the ad, but how she hates the woman in the ad. Not so much the woman the actress, but the woman portrayed by the actress in the ad. Who is not a real woman.

It got me thinking about how I hate people who aren't real all the time. I hate loads of fictional people. I hate Phoebe from Friends, and the yellow Care Bear, and that girl from the Lava Life commercials, and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. But the fictional character I hate the most?

It's Player 3.


See, Robyn and I played a lot of computer-Jeopardy when we were in college, but because we're a little bit of what you call dumb, we played together. As one person. Named Steku.


This is Steku the first time he ever won. About three months after we started playing. And we played two or three games a day. Like I said: a little bit of what you call dumb.




Please note, there was never any Jeopardy played without Grape Man (side of computer) and Steve Yzerman (bobblehead, bottom right). Ahh, bobbleheads. You think you're gonna get bored with them, but you never do. Bobbley bobbley bobbley.

Ah yes, Steku. But that was the Old Jeopardy. Old Jeopardy had such characters as Mike and Sue (Steku was always Old Man In Sweater), and Rob and Jenny, who were always making eyes at each other. I always kind of suspected they had something going on, but that her parents didn't approve. Because he was from New York.

That, incidentally, was the highest score we ever achieved on Old Jeopardy.

But then came my birthday, and Robyn got me New Jeopardy - Jeopardy 2003. The 'new' Jeopardy no old men in sweaters or clandestine couples, only the question-box-screen with the players' names and scores on the bottoms. We were sad to lose our happy characters, with all their made-up back stories and crazy ways, but we soon discovered that our new opponents had distinct personalities as well.

Player 2, see, he's kind of dumb as well. I think he's won once or twice, and I'm sure we were stunned when it happened. Probably we applauded. He seems like a nice enough guy, and when he gives his answer, his voice rises at the end, as though it really is a question. Like he's not quite sure of himself. I'm Ron Burgandy? His only irritating trait is how he'll say 'Crossword clues 'M'...for a grand,' and the way he forces out 'for a grand' makes it sound like a phrase he's just learned from his teenage nephew and is trying out on national television.

Player 3, on the other hand, is a bitch. No one can say 'What is the repeal of the Corn Law in 1846' with more insufferating smugness. No one can squeeze condescension into the phrase 'for 800, Alex' quite like she can, as though $800 were piddling change, and she could take it or leave it. No one, but NO ONE, should get ALL of the 'Presidents: Where Are They Buried.' And sometimes, when I know the answer, she beats me to the buzz-in.

No one beats me to the buzz-in.

So Steku takes on Players 2 and 3, and usually he kicks their asses because of his superior knowledge of ants. And tents in the Bible. And salami. And the way he'll guess the final Jeopardy question based solely on the category, because when it's Famous Women, the answer is always Helen Keller. And when he beats Player 3...man. It's better than chocolate. Or...I guess...sex, because he's a dude. But the handful of times when Player 3's beaten him - well, those were dark days, my friend.

But we never let it go out on a loss, and we always come back with a surprising wealth of knowledge about bats (little known fact: while Robyn and I both think that monkeys are awesome, and that we would know a lot about monkeys, the hard truth is that we, in fact, know very little about monkeys. Jeopardy has taught us a valuable lesson) and then we follow up our surprising wealth of knowledge with a flawless guess in Final Jeopardy, and then we do a dance on Player 3's favorite sweater. With our muddy boots.

Sometimes that's all it takes

On a day in which I have spilled coffee down (not on, down) my shirt, walked home from class at 5:30 IN THE DARK, back to class at 6:50 IN THE DARK, and home from class at 10:00 IN THE DARK, have zipped my neck skins into my jacket zipper, and have a quiz tomorrow that I can't muster up the fear to study for, I'd like to leave you with this snippet from my Modern Lit class:

It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat.

Thank you, W B Yeats, for making it ok.

An auspicious occasion

Now that Halloween is safely behind us, and none of my friends or relatives found razors in their popcorn balls, we can start thinking about Christmas.

When we lived in the States, we didn't really reach this point until the end of November, because Turkey Day stood between Pumpkin Day and Nutcracker Day. We had to wait all the way until Thanksgiving (which comes on the 3rd Saturday in November, or some such nonsense) before we could set up our tree.

Up here in the happy North, we can start decking the halls and hitting the rum-nog while the pumpkin rots on our steps (we would have thrown it out with last week's trash, but it didn't fit).

So many things signal the onset of the Christmas season. The malls should start playing carols any day now. The thrift stores have their tattered trees and decorations out of storage and slouched next to the counter of fake-gold jewelry. It is possible at this minute to buy earrings shaped like little wreaths.

One seasonal item in particular has always made me weep with nostalgia. Not the gingerbread, not the egg nog, not the nasty bits of fruit cake, but these. Juicy, fragrant, peelable Christmas oranges. It's not the sight of them so much that gets me, since they've been in stores for at least a month now and will hang on until long after the tree's been de-balled and burnt up, but the actual smell and feel and taste. Oranges are around all year, but not these....these rare, precious fruits where difficulty in eating is exceeded by payoff. Some fruits are, let's face it, more trouble than their worth (I'm looking at you, pomegranates), but a Christmas orange practically peels itself for you. All you have to do is move your hand towards your mouth.

Today, after weeks of restraint - weeks of walking through the produce section with my eyes averted and my nose plugged - I purchased and ate my very first Christmas orange of the season.

Feliz Navidad.

Conflicting signals

You know how sometimes hunger grows gradually, and you go from being a bit snackish to being moderately hungry to being ravenous in a clear and orderly fashion? And how other times, you're wandering around not-hungry as a clam, and then WHAM! Your insides start digesting themselves?

So, I got home from class early today, but I'd eaten a big lunch and wasn't hungry so I put off making dinner even though it was already half-prepared. And so I poked around doing a little bit of nothing until suddenly I needed to eat so badly that I couldn't even wait for the water to boil, and ended up eating half a box of dry pasta.

Now dinner's about ready, because I went ahead and made it anyways, but I'm not hungry because I have half a box of dry pasta slowly expanding in my stomach acid.

And the moral of the story, kids, is that your stomach is an idiot. Don't let it tell you it's not hungry.

That time I was a CSI

Ok, remember that time I said I was taking this CSI class, and that I hoped we'd get to all kinds of crazy things, like dust for prints, and that I'd keep you updated? Here's yer update, folks.

The class is awesome.

I mean, in some respects, it's totally boring. It's been dumbed way down so that Art students can take it and pass it and fulfill their science requirements. Science students actually aren't allowed to take it, it's that easy. It's the Earth Sciences of college. Which, awesome, who doesn't love easy. But also, there isn't a heavy emphasis placed on learning things, because we all know why we're here.

So the actual class part - boring. I do crossword puzzles online. But the lab part? SO rad. Almost immediately, we got to dust for prints. And we're all rubbing our fingers on the sides of our noses and through our hair to make them all greasy, and then pressing them onto flat surfaces, and then dusting all around like we don't know where the fingerprint is, and hey! Malfeasance was commited here! But I had just showered, and so I was pretty greaseless and we had to take a lot of prints so that we could practice the different ways of processing them. So I've run out of nose-grease and my hair is clean as a whistle, and I hear Leslie saying that if we need greasier fingers we can come up to the front and use some of the hand lotion, but I'm not looking at her when she says it, and when I finally make my way to the front there's just this tube of miscellaneous jelly so I smear some of that on my thumb and go back to making prints, and it makes some pretty well-defined prints, but it isn't until twenty minutes later when I'm back up at the front that I see the container of hand cream, on the other table. And the tube of jelly is gone.

So that was fun. Also fun was the time we had to study our hairs under the microscope. Joel and I have often remarked on how somethings are awesome on the body, like hair and skin, and just SO gross off of the body. For reals, though, think about it. My head-hair is so fabulous, and Joel will run his fingers through it, but my pile-of-hair in the shower is disgusting, and no one wants to touch it. (In a slightly related manner, somethings are tolerable on the body, like band-aids, but totally unacceptable off the body. I don't think there's anything more universally revolting than a body-less band-aid.) So examining our hairs under a fairly powerful microscope was an excercise in revulsion, but also kind of interesting. Especially when your hair has three distinct colors between root and tip.

We've also done some things with DNA that I won't try to explain because I don't understand them. Suffice it to say that we were processing some DNA and then running it through a thing, and when the thing came out the other end, there was one lane that didn't have any DNA, and that was mine. I totally botched that one.

We had an entomologist (bug scientist) come in and show us a bunch of slides of dead bodies with bugs on them. She also showed us videos of an experiment she did which involved dressing pig corpses up in clothing, leaving them in a house to rot for a month, setting fire to the house, and waiting for the neighbors to call the fire department. I will take up entomology as my second career.

We'll have another speaker in a few weeks on blood spatter patterns, and then we have a lab where we get to make our OWN blood spatter patterns (with fake blood) and let me tell you, I will be dying a violent death. Everybody better wear their lab coats.

So all in all, yes, it's been exactly like CSI. A bit tedious with some awesome moments. Oh yes, and we aren't allowed to wear contact lenses in the lab, and so two thirds of the class shows up in our dorky glasses from the twelfth grade, and you can tell who doesn't wear them all the time because we go to scratch our eyes, and end up poking ourselves in the lens. Idiots.

This is difficult

Hello friends. I am NaBloPoMoing, which is why I'm sitting here trying to think of something to tell you instead of reading one of the four books I've bought in the last two days.

Um, I am kicking my sister's ass at Facebook Scrabble. I just spelled 'weaponry,' using all my tiles and hitting a triple word score, for 98 points.

Oooh, speaking of my sister, Jane and I were just talking today about this awesome Dwight Schrute pumpking we'd seen on the Internet (I know, lame, but LOOK at it. It's freaking amazing)...

And then I mentioned this time my sister free-hand-carved a Koala-pumpkin, (Koala as in our dog, not as in the marsupial) and I thought you all should see it.It is brilliant. She is brilliant.

I have a headache from all this thinking.

A history concluded

I lied. I was going somewhere with that post.

Brand-new awesomeness.

A history of hair

The year after I graduated from high school, I got my hair dreadlocked. They looked awesome, but they were way more upkeep then you think they're gonna be, and they kind of smelled, even though I washed them all the time, which may have been why they were so much upkeep. But the thing with dreadlocks is that when you're done with them, you have to cut them off. Like, off.

It only took a month or so for my hair to grow from awful army-marine-short to cute-flippy-short, but you know how it is when you have bad hair. Each day is, like, three years long. I'm sorry, I have no photos of the dreadlocks OR the month I looked like a lesbian.

By my first year of college, I had cute short hair. Robyn also had cute short hair. Look how cute we are, with our short hair. But college is not the time for short hair. College is the time for sexy looooooooong hair, so we decided to grow it out. Every two weeks I would march into my RA's room and demand that she trim my mullet. Because that is what happens to short hair when you grow it out; it becomes a mullet.

So we went through the horrible, awkward stages together: the just-at-the-ears stage, the shaggy-bowl-cut stage, the at-your-chin-and-poofy stage. It was all bad, all the time. You try to dress it up with little clips or pigtails or whatever, but no. Still bad.

That was five years ago now. It is at this point that I would like to draw your attention to my current hair. It is long.

My sister's hair is also quite long, but hers still firmly resides in Awesome-Long country.

Mine has crossed the border into Amish-Long. Note the severe, blunt ends. Note the lack of any depth or layering whatsoever. Note how hearty and capable I look from the back.

Note how hot my sister is in this picture.

Ok, now back to my hair. Note the coloring trifecta. No, this is not a trick of the light. That is indeed the mousy brown of my original color on top, the unfortunately brassy root-lightening I had done before the wedding in the middle, and whatever color the rest of it was on the bottom.

You thought I was going somewhere with this. But no, that's really all I have to say. My hair is completely not-awesome.