the first snowfall

I want to be friends with the type of people who have no shame in sticking out their tongues to catch snowflakes.

Battle Wounds

I received a grad school related injury today as I tried to wrangle a staple out of the 40+ page stapler. It dug into my finger and left it bleeding, aching as I tried to quickly staple the rest of my paper packets while not bleeding on myself or my fresh copies.

Then I wandered around school in search of a band-aid, to no avail. You can usually find me by following the trail of coffee drips around the building but this afternoon, you could follow my blood trail.

Earlier this week I got a cardboard cut while opening a box for coffee hour. Since I received my injury while on the job, I considered trying to get worker's comp, but instead I just found a band-aid so I wouldn't bleed all over the coffee hour food.

Apparently I've been bleeding a lot. Life is hard as a grad student. But apparently we're the worst people:

Make me beans, my women!

I can't seem to make myself sit down and do work. Uuugh. I have things to read and things to write, but all I do is check my email and Google reader. Normally I head home early on Tuesday afternoons (so I can procrastinate there) but I have a curriculum meeting today at 4. Then house dinner! At least if I'm procrastinating, I should be doing something still useful like updating my resume or working on my spider solitaire win percentage (28%).

My prof for my history class gave everyone a paper extension until Monday after break, so the pressing thing I had to do this week is no longer pressing. I spent a couple hours yesterday building a model for my church architecture class, so that's coming along nicely. My other things aren't due until after Thanksgiving break or even into reading week, so I'm feeling relatively stress free this week. I'll have to bring home work, but I should be able to get it all done.

I'm flying home Friday afternoon so that's also on my mind... I'm not sure if I'll get to doing laundry before then so I might just bring home a suitcase of dirty clothes. I hope I can do at least one load before then, since I'm really hitting the bottom of the barrel in terms of clean clothes. I might have to fly home in a paper sack. I blame this whole thing on Elm Campus forcing us to get rid of our washer and dryer.

I'm in the basement of the library now (in a failed attempt to get stuff done) and I just saw Josh. When he saw me, the first words out his mouth were, "What are YOU doing here?" Jerk.

I'll leave you with this exchange between Jake, Nichole and I yesterday as we all cuddled:

Jake: Cuddle me, my women! Make me some beans!
Me: Beans?
Jake: Isn't that what straight guys like?
Nichole: I thought you said beans because it was a Mexican thing.
Jake: Hmm... I would have said taco if I wanted it to be a Mexican thing!

I love my housemates.

Success! 50 books in 45 weeks!

I've done it! I've accomplished my goal of reading 50 books in one year; in fact, I've finished weeks ahead of time. Here are the last 15 or 16 books from my list:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Truth and Beauty by Ann Pachett
Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows by J.K. Rawling
Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
The Art Thief by Noah Charney
Awkward and Definition by Ariel Schrag
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Basic Christianity By John Stott
Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Dayton
Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory by Randall Balmer

Italicized means it I read it for school, although the titles kind of give them away. Combined together, I read 14,474 pages with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being the longest at 759 and the shortest being Awkward/Definition by Ariel Schrag at 84 pages (it's a graphic novel). Women authors made a fairly impressive showing at 21 strong, and although they mostly wrote the fiction books I read, with some exceptions. I'm not too sure on the racial makeup of the authors, but I'm fairly certain most of them are white. I know that Cornel West (Democracy Matters), Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Spendid Suns), Judith Weisenfeld (Hollywood Be Thy Name), and Barack Obama (Dreams of My Father) are people of color, but I'm not sure of any others. I'm also unsure of the sexual orientation of my authors - unless they state it specifically, I really don't know. Last year I had Dan Savage and Emilie Townes on my list, but I'm not sure about this year. I also had 26 women authors last year, which is more representative of the gender breakdown in society.

So goals for my next 50 books - more diversity in general including, but not limited to, racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientations.

Huzzah!

When I listen to The Current (Minnesota Public Radio's alternative station), I write down songs that I like, and I kept writing down Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs. Finally yesterday or the day before I bought their latest album and the single Maps, both of which are amazing. I'm in love with Phenomena, Cheated Hearts, Gold Lion and Honeybear. Pretty much everything they have, actually.

I'm on my way out

I fear one day my work will kill me.

Not that the stress and high intensity will cause my heart or head to go or something like that, but that my giant stacks of books will finally tip over and bury me in a pile of theology and postmodern literature.

So hungry

View from my window. That tree was super bright red, yo.


That's the grape vine we have in our house. It's possibly dying for any number of the following reasons: 1: not enough sunlight, 2: can't live inside in a pot, 3: too much water, 4: not enough water, 5: doesn't like me because I try to eat it.

Saturday Morning at the Catholic House

I made a Micky Mouse pancake for brunch this morning! It was delicious.

When I cut into it with my fork, Josh said, "aaah!"

As I kept poking at it with my fork, Jake then said, "Take that, Mickey!"

I replied, "Why is Disney World so expensive, Mouse?! I know Minnie's been around the Kingdom..."

Olivia just shook her head in sadness.