Time for a very tiny celebration.

My first draft is finished and handed in.  I am giddy to have that albatross sent off for scrutiny before returning to hang round my neck with added critique.  The thrills.

One of Joel's exams on Thursday was postponed due to snow (have I talked about this?) which dampered all of Friday night's celebrations because how can you celebrate being done when you aren't done?  That didn't prevent us from going to that really skeevy bar with the floor covered in peanut shells but where you (contrarily) aren't allowed to throw peanut shells.

Aren't, Grayson.

Awww, man.  Still having fun though, right guys?

Whatever.  No one listens re: the peanuts, and I think the servers are just contractually obliged to say Don't throw the shells whenever they see you throwing the shells, but nothing says they have to reinforce that rule.

What were we talking about originally?  Joel's exam.  They moved it to tonight so this morning he had to go to his first day of a new rotation and then go take the exam for the last rotation.  Worst, right?  But in honor of him being actually done the Big Three Rotations (Pediatrics, Surgery, Internal Medicine) tonight, and in honor of my first draft being out of my sticky fingers, we'll be having some very expensive beers.

Envy us.

It is time to go watch several episodes of Top Model.

I haven't so much 'finished' my thesis as 'stopped.'  I no longer understand the words I am using in the order that I am using them.

I have class tomorrow morning and then maybe three hours to finish a rough tweak before I hand it in.  That will have to do.  It's a first draft, it's allowed to be drafty.

This is literally all my blog is going to be about for the next month.

We are free-trialling Netflix this month and we are going to watch the shit out of these free movies.  First up: a documentary on Yellowstone National Park.  I know, but it was late and Joel had been out and I had had friends over and we were just looking to fall asleep to something visually spectacular.

We missed the first five minutes in which they probably explained where YNP is because we were debating where it is (I thought it sounded like it should be in California, but I think I was thinking of Yosemite, and Joel thought it was in Colorado, but it turns up in Wyoming.  I'd forgotten that was a state) and then it was all blizzards and wolves and bison and OTTERS WHAT?  Otters in the snow, guys.  Helladorable.

Somewhere around the return of spring we fell asleep, but I'm sure most of the animals made it out alive.  Except for that one deer-thing.

We went sledding.

It is sunny and there is snow, ipso facto we went sledding today.  Except that we don't own sleds, and Walmart's seasonal section has moved on to patio furniture and rakes.  We bought some inflatable snowmobiles on clearance for $4. 

They were faster than anticipated.

And easier than regular sleds to tote back up the hill (on account of being full of air).

They did present a tendency to tip if you tried to steer with the handles.  You had to use the ass, and sometimes the heels.

I also bought a bathing suit, because you can lure spring in if you aggregate enough scanty clothing.  Also because Walmart bathing suits are cheap, and absurdly adorable.

Polka dots!  Ruffles!  Ruffles WITH polka dots!

Today has been very...seasonal.

I take it back. It's not like summer at all.

The hell, late February?  This is outrageous.

In other news, remember that time Joel and I went to see 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee' and were unexpectedly and hilariously in it?  Ha ha, that was rad.  ANYway, last night we went to the same theater to see 'The Cryptogram' as our belated Valentines Day present to ourselves.

Huh. 

The blurbs and reviews promised TENSION and HITCHCOCKIAN MENACE and heavily implied that spooky doings will be done.  But...a boy is waiting for his father to come home from work, but then his mother finds a note saying that the father has left her, and then in the next act she finds out that her beloved gay friend with whom she has been chatting this whole time facilitated her husband's infidelity, and then in the third act everyone is angry at everyone else, and the boy keeps saying that he's hearing voices which, dissolving marriage and betrayal or no dissolving marriage and betrayal, you should probably get that checked out because your boy is about to either Sixth Sense or A Beautiful Mind up in here.  

It was snappily-written and well-acted but I am a philistine who needs for those things to be combined with a discernible plot arc.  I know that summary kind of sounds like things happened, but they didn't so much happen as serve as a theoretical backdrop for a lot of interrupted conversations.  From a snooty analytic standpoint it was an intelligent commentary on the moment of lost innocence ETC but from a lazy theater-goer's standpoint it was...it was there.

Joel and I have tried to watch The Wire and we got three seasons into Six Feet Under before we realized that we were mutually hating it.  We like 30 Rock and Big Bang Theory and Community and Modern Family and have finally come to terms with the possibility that we like our theater like we like our tv: short, amusing, and (if possible) set to music.

It is still snowing.  Add another inch and more daylight on to that top photo.

It's like pie with less work (and, sadly, less pastry)

Ok remember that time I learned to make cake in a mug and then had mug-cake every day for, like, two weeks, that second part of which I neglected to tell you because it makes me sound irresponsible?  Well!  Now I have taken up frying my apples.

It's no mug-cake, but spring break tends to give me The Fats and frying the apple upgrades it from a Healthy Snack to a Tasty Treat and makes me (slightly) less inclined to go foraging for old Christmas candy.  Also, APPLES!  Good for the intestinal biosphere.

Take one apple.  Skin if you are not lazy (I am both lazy and sort of convinced that all the nutrients are in the skin), core, slice thin.  Melt a bit of butter in a pan...half a teaspoon, say.  Probably more.  Saute the apple as if it were an onion and you were making soup.  Maybe make soup with the apple, I don't know.  If not making soup with the apple, add a teaspoon or so of brown sugar after maybe fiveish minutes, or when your apple starts to get soft.  Splash in some lemon juice, the littlest bit of vanilla extract, quite a bit of cinnamon.  Saute some more until you think you are done.  Eat.

Also, I have been getting my work done in the bedroom because we have these enormous south-facing doors, which are hideous in the summer (because the room gets very warm) but delicious in the fallwinterspring (because the room gets very warm).

It's like summer without all the complaining about the heat.

Division of labor

I went to grate half a block of mozzarella that Joel insisted was going to start molding any minute now so that I could throw it in the freezer and halt the molding process.  I like to have mozzarella in the house because it is delicious on things like Lasagna and Everything Else, but it is hell to grate.  Pizza-mozzarella is, anyways.  It is like trying to grate a very old cheese string.

ANYway, I also have a tiny food processor that I was bequeathed by my mother (who has a Magic Bullet now and is too good for tiny food processors) that I usually use to grate large amounts of freezer-bound cheese.  I chunked my mozzarella in and the processor whizzed for a second and then quit.  I thought I'd broken it.  No amount of redistribution of cheese would make it start up again.

So I had to grate my mozzarella by hand, and since I had chunked it up it was like grating the very last bit of cheese, only seven or eight times.  Woe and alas for my fingertips.  AND, after I'd removed all the cheese and grated it (by hand) I fired up the empty food processor just to see, and it whizzed like a champ, all Dude, I will make hummus for you and lemon curd and will even grate carrots if you need it, but no way am I tackling that mozzarella.

Touche, food proccessor.

Spring Break is what I want my whole life to look like.

Friday I read two books.  Yesterday I read a book and cleaned the house.  Today I read a book and walked Seamus with Chelsea.  Now I am settling in for some Seerious Work.  It's not even 4 pm so I can still file today under Productive as well as Restful and Puppy, Snuggled.

I have thrown a potato in the oven because I might want one in a few hours.

The work it worketh every day.

I have loafed with a vengeance and today it is time to empty the dishwasher, do some laundry, and have back at the thesis.  It was great while it lasted.

The Connie Willis was superb.

Let the good times etc.

I mentally abdicated my semester Tuesday after my presentation even though I still had two days left and yesterday it took all my wrangling skills to apply myself to my books for long enough to churn out sufficient thesis for my meeting today.  But I have come through Thursdaywhyareyousolong intact and now I am officially on break.

I have an obscene amount of scholarly things to get done in the next ten days including quilting together my various thesis-bits into something I can call a First Draft and hand in.  But tomorrow I will be lolling about reading Connie Willis and probably not putting on pants.  Enjoy your workday, suckers.

I see you, spring. You come this way now.

I left the house without boots on for the first time since September.

How lewd.

My grown-up clothes.

Ok and so also?  For this theory presentation not only is it on theory but we have to dress professionally.  Which...we are humanities students.  We are almost incapable of putting ourselves into things that are not sweatpants or sweatpant-adjacent.

Closet-scrounging = me looking officious.

See how officious?  And...er...comfortable?  Actually, the skirt is pretty stretchy and wedges are like the Ugg of heels so except that my blazer doesn't fit me in the boobs, I'm fairly at ease in this.  Also, it will hide my EXCESSIVE FLOP SWEAT.

I have almost thrown out each item in this outfit both individually and collectively over the last three years, but thank goodness for my hoarding tendencies or I'd be showing up for my presentation in Joel's suit.

Now to go do some deep breathing.

Happy Valumtimes

I have a 25-minute presentation in my theory class tomorrow, the anxiety-producing words there being '25-minute,' 'theory' and 'tomorrow' so for Valumtimes Joel is making me fajitas while I anxietize and then we will watch the Canucks game and eat the Blizzards we have in the freezer.

Blizzards in the freezer, you say?  That shows both forethought and restraint!  What that shows is that we went to Dairy Queen with a 2-for-1 Blizzard coupon yesterday but when we got there we realized (with the help of a giant poster) that we wanted a Flamethrower instead.  But 2-for-1 coupons are no gift horse to be looked in the mouth, so we got Blizzards as well and threw them in the freezer.  I use the term 'Blizzard' loosely to mean 'most of a Blizzard.'  It has been a long day.

All I do these days is cook, eat and type.

We eat a lot of soup, on account of our house being never not cold, and one time I made bread to go with the soup and now we can never not have bread with our soup.  The other day one of my friends on twitter was going on about her stuffed bread and I was all *perk!* but it turns out stuffed bread is more like a pastry, and not what I had invented quickly in my head.

Unperturbed, I set about making what I had invented quickly in my head.  Bread dough (probably any will do.  I used half of this), and then a medly of pesto, feta, and sundried tomatoes.

My medly is not photogenic.  ANYway, after first rise, roll out bread dough into a long oval that is as wide(ish) as your loaf pan.  Literally the only thing I have learned about making bread is that if you are rolling it out and it is resisting, just walk away for ten minutes to let the gluten relax.  Spread oval with unsightly medly.

Roll from short end, pinch edges in futile effort to keep the insides inside.  Place seam-down in loaf pan. 

Think to yourself, That could be bigger.  (It is due to this sentiment that I spent every Home Ec 11 class cleaning out the bottom of the oven.  There are many things, muffins and cookies included, which are the size they are for a reason.)  Wander off so the bread can embiggen.

Brush with oil, because why not.  Bake at 400.  Mine took, like, 25 minutes? 

Nom, with soup.  (Soup not pictured, nor nomming neither.)

My attention span is not long enough.

I'm five weeks into school which means I'm five weeks into writing my honors thesis (the proposal for which I spent three weeks last semester writing and submitting and revising).  At most it's only ever taken me a week to write a paper, between the mulling and the research and the drafting and the letting it sit and the making-less-shitty.

My topic is still very great, and my source material (Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca) is as salacious and readable-even-for-people-who-are-not-English-majors as ever, but I am tired of poking at it.  I admitted to my supervisor yesterday that I feel like I'm flogging a dead horse and she looked at me sympathetically before replying 'Well, in three weeks and about nine pages, you will give that dead horse to me and have a flogging reprieve.  Then, of course, I will return your dead horse to you and you will have to resume flogging, but with more finesse.'

So.  Amid all the other things (presentation yesterday, paper yesterday, TWENTY-FIVE MINUTE PRESENTATION IN THEORY ON TUESDAY IN WHICH IT APPEARS WE ARE ALL GOING TO GET 'B'S) I am plugging away.

We are down to double-digits.

I am already packing things in my mind.

Impromptu Wednesday morning skillet!

That there is my second-breakfast, for when I am invariably hungry in an hour.

Let's talk about my jeggings.

Some people (Tika) are still on the fence about jeggings.  I have been ruined for ordinary jeans because they are so uncomfortable and am pretty zealous about their leggingy counterparts.  They combine my love of exceedingly tight jeans with my fondness for wearing pyjama-like things out of the house.  Brace yourself for a photo-coercion, with side-bar of necklace.

Jeggings.  They look like jeans.

Except that I can do impromptu lunges in them.

They are not unlike the pair of stretchy jeans that Robyn had in 2002 that Trisha and I used to fight over, except that those had actual front pockets, not just decorative illusions.

These do have back pockets and, weirdly, a change pocket.

But why am I wearing my boots in these pictures?  Jeggings are skinny, kidlings.  I am not quite used to seeing all of my foot in this way.

Also, your entire ass-crack will be showing when you sit down, if you are not careful.  So wear a belt (they have belt loops!) or a long shirt, or just throw your decency out the window.  Whatever.

In other, non-jegging news, I am loving the shit out of a bolo tie I got at a clothing swap last weekend.  I wore it to Super Bowl yesterday because I do not own any football-, Wisconson-, or Pennsylvania-themed items, but the Bowl was being played in Texas, and I feel delightfully Texan in this.

Y'all.

Life list

I have been adding to-do items to ye olde life list, and April and May should be huge months for knocking things out of that park (I plan on making Joel take me for tapas for my birthday) but for right now I'm just struggling to stay on top of my front-loaded final semester (<-w00ert to that 'final' bit) and have kind of let 'achieving life goals that are not specifically #33: Get (another) BA' slide by the wayside.

Today, though, I managed to make headway on an important goal I have filed under Do Not Damage My Body Because I Only Have The One.  New, Raych-appropriate shoes, here I come.

Now back to my previously-scheduled scramble.