Update from the Capitol

I never can remember if capital has an A of an O in the second half of the word and I just don’t care enough to look it up write now, because I am on SPRING BREAK!

The renting of the car went of without a hitch and we headed out after church on Sunday. Unfortunately we hit a fair amount of rain and then thick fog though the mountains, but singing along to Sound of Music and Lion King got us to DC by 3:30am. This lack of sleep did end up effecting me (especially combined with my bad decision to carry around my water bottle) on Monday. But despite my exhaustion we walked all around the big DC monuments (White House through Smithsonian) and I took lots if cloudy day pictures. After meeting up with Sarah for very yummy Indian food I dragged myself home to get some sleep.

This morning it was wonderful to realize how much a goodnight’s sleep combined with morning plans to go sit in a coffeeshop revives my sense of wellbeing. So that brings me up to now where I just finished a very yummy meal, read a book for children’s lit, caught up on emails, journaled and generally detoxed.

Plans for the afternoon include another jaunt to the Smithsonian, maybe this time we will actually go in a few musuems, and then making homemade pizza with the girls. There is nothing like taking a break to once again feel like your life is managable!

The up side of occasionally being one of those anxiety riddled types

So it feels like the past two weeks have been a mini-whirlwind of  making to-do lists in my head, ignoring said lists, worrying about the lists, finally doing the tasks and then repeating.  In addition to making BIG decisions about summer classes, student teaching, financial aid, I have been getting work done for class and facing the prospect of a jam packed full last month of the semester.  To top it all of I decided to travel to Washington D.C over Spring Break.  While I am totally pumped about the trip I am actually more worried about the dreaded packing and getting school work done part of things than anything else at the moment.  Hopefully by the time we leave on Sunday I will actually be able to luxuriate in the joy of “Yay! road trip with friends!”.  So here as an attempt to remind myself of what I can actually accomplish when I stress myself out enough is a list of things I have done and things I still need to do:

– baked a double batch of bread to act as a thank you for the handy man that installed my CD player speakers above the kitchen cabinets = surround sound cooking!

TO-DO = bake another loaf as traveling food and hostess present?

– filled out my FAFSA

To-Do = figure out financial situation for paying for my own health care benefits next year while student teaching

– wrote up and submitted my professional autobiography and student teaching application

To-Do: Set up appointment to talk about student teaching placement details

– finished rough draft of fiction book evaluation

To-Do: Revise, revise, revise and then turn in before I leave on Spring Break

– finalized road trip details with the girls and reserved rental car

To-Do: PACKING

– brainstormed book talk ideas for children’s literature class and checked out/placed on hold crazy long list of possible candidates

To-Do: Read books and whittle down list to 8-10 books

– sent out upteen survey reminders to classmates for group project

To-Do: Analyze results

– began research for paper on This Book is Overdue and Librarian2.0

To-Do: Actually write paper

– worry a lot about other group project that still feels unclear

To-Do: Actually work on group project

another weird dream

So Becca and I were helping Erini out at her toy store on a Saturday because no one else had been able to work.  But instead of selling many toys Erini’s store had all these crazy high tech gadgets for really cheap prices.  The best part was instead of a cash register there was a box shaped computer with buttons on that would turn it into a Wii or whatever else struck your fancy.  Of course this meant that Becca and I had little clue how to help people pay, so I just wondered around looking at cool things (e-books in the shape of credit cards that you could swipe and add to any mobile device/computer) and bam all of a sudden Ben Stiller walked in to the store.

But he was pretending to be this musician named Poison, so he had this rock outfit on and long hair.  Apparently he was pretty disgruntled about something or other, so he just laid down in the middle of the store.  Eventually we all persuaded him to get up (by this time the store was really crowded so he kept getting stepped on) and decided to drive him home.  So there we were driving along, Ben Stiller and I in the back seat and Becca and someone else driving (Jess? Katie? not sure).  So it turned out that Ben Stiller had been born in Elkhart county (pretty sure this is not true) so we chatted about that for a while.  I told him I was from Goshen, we bonded.  Soon we were at his house, but before he got out he agreed to take a picture with me, so we took two.  One nice and normal with my cheesing a huge “I’m sitting next to Ben Stiller” smile and the other of us doing our best “Blue Steel”.

So anyone else have a weird dream recently?

Another blog post about my weekend

Apparently not a lot happens in my life during those Monday through Friday days, or perhaps slightly more likely my interest/energy to discuss said things is too low.  But however last weekend was another spectacular weekend, full of visits from afar, pregnant friends, hospital visits, brother time, car time, eating in restaurants time, puppy time, nostalgic musical time and of course lots of friend time.  And because I actually managed to successfully record this weekend with my camera (instead of just lugging the bag around with me and not opening it) I will be telling you all about with these photos.  Of course I took way more than I will include here, so feel free to follow that little link in the right column over to my Flickr account for the full onslaught.

The weekend actually started Friday morning, when visiting Katie, Becca, Jess and I all piled into my car to head south towards Indy. Jess was kind enough to take this photo and unlike the other ones she took, we actually look awake in this one.

We stopped by West Lafayette to pick up the Jonathan and then on to Indy where we had a wonderful visit with Crystal. Then in order to continue our day o' car, we headed back north towards Goshen.

Leaving Indy is when the rain finally hit and so I made Jonathan drive, because as demonstrated in this photo, he can do it with his eyes closed.

Then Will and Kari very graciously hosted a nice pack of college buddies at their house for dinner. After eating lots of yummy lasagna and talking our heads off, we retired to the living room to play games and try and feel Kari's baby kick.

In her quest to feel little baby kicks, Jo decided to do some extracurricular reading.

Then a bunch of us girls got together for breakfast at the County Seat. Unfortunately Kari had to leave early to get to her baby shower on time, so she missed being part of the group shot.

And along with the spectacular company, the food was probably the best meal I had all weekend. Half of a Fritz's Special with gravy and a side of homemade whole wheat toast and strawberry jam. Incredible!

After breakfast we went over to Steph's house for more hanging out time and to cuddle up to her cute pets. All named after Joss Whedon characters, Doyle (the above puppy), Oz and Alpha (the Beta fish that I have no photos of) were all pretty awesome.

Don't tell, but Oz was actually my favorite, such a pretty kitty!

Unfortunately my parents were out of town, but that didn't stop me from staying at their house, eating their food, sleeping in their beds and stealing their wireless. Thanks Mom and Dad, at least I left my laundry at home this time 🙂

On Sunday, Jess and I finally packed up our bags and drove back to Chicago. Thanks for capturing this great shot of the city Jess and thanks to all the wonderful friends who made for such a wonderful weekend.

A good weekend

I know it is already Thursday and I more inclined to think ahead to this coming weekend of friends, visiting Crystal, Goshen, etc, but I never updated you all on how my past weekend went.  It was a great one, full of things from start to finish, but added by some spectacular spring like weather a real bang up job.

Other than signing up for the correspondence course, I actually completed everything on my list, so here is some of the proof:

Friday after work, Jess and I walked down to the Lake, which was of course gorgeous.  And despite the fact that I can’t seem to keep my mittens out of my photos, I really liked this shot.

And here is a picture of the new dresser, which I have to say I am 100% happy with.  However it no longer has such a limited number of things on it, because now it exists in the vortex that is my room.

But anyways, this past weekend was good, and I pretty excited about this coming weekend, which starts tomorrow morning with an epic driving day.  We will start off at 8am, head down to Purdue to pick up my younger brother, than on down to Indy to visit the awesome Crystal, before heading up north for a celebratory (and probably raucous) dinner with dear friends from college to celebrate a number of things including, soon to be born children, graduation from seminary, acceptance to grad school and the visit of far off friends.  The rest of the weekend will be as jam packed with friends as I can fill it, before driving back to Evanston on Sunday just in time for a church meeting.

So yes, my life right now seems to exist mainly in blogging about/anticipating my weekends.  But I will also add that on Tuesday night (I didn’t have class because of Spring Break) a certain someone performed with another friend in her very first open-mic.  I will let her take on the task of telling you about it, but I will say as their biggest fan and number one groupie, they did quite well.

And one last thing, I also have photos to show you of my new iPod touch, or more accurately the cool little carrying case that I knitted for it.  This weekend will be its first test as my pseudo laptop on the go as I take it to the far off land of Goshen.

Things I want/need to do this weekend

– Do some coloring.  During a recent trip to Target, I indulged in a bit of childhood nostalgia and treated myself to a brand new package of 64 crayons.  You remember those right, the beautiful box full of shiny new wax and *bonus* a built in crayon sharpener?  For some reason growing up I loved buying art supplies*, especially those large combination packs of cheap watercolor, pastels, markers, etc.  I think there was something so inspiring about new tools to be creative with.

– Take pictures of my new dresser! and maybe even let you see my new iPod.  I know, I know, I ended up with both, but thanks to several days of buyer’s regret and lots of good advice I am now pretty much okay with that.

– Sleep in at least once

– Take a walk to the lake and bring my camera

– Serve communion on Sunday

– Start figuring how how I need to go about renewing my passport (I can’t believe I too my first international trip almost 10 years ago already!)

– Sign up for a correspondence course to finish off my third education class (Go go gadget – Abby actually graduates from library school)

– Mail a package and order a book

– Look over This Book is Overdue and do some research paper brainstorming

So how about the rest of you, what are your weekend plans?

*A more unfortunately interest of mine was buying large bulk packages of cheap trashy red lipstick and nail polish, both of which I never really wore.

Just in case

You haven’t seen this video that is everywhere on the Internet right now, give it a looksey.  It is Ok Go’s newest video (the dudes who did the crazy awesome treadmill video that has been viewed almost 50 million times!)

There are of course many great things about that, but my favorite parts are a tie between the umbrellas and the ending of course.  Also while you are at it, check out the 4 making of videos, for some nifty behind the nerdy scenes footage.

a little of this, a little of that

I feel like I haven’t had a catch-em-up picture laden post for a little while, so here it goes.  I should probably note that those of you who regularly pop over to my Flickr stream, won’t probably find that much new stuff, but maybe I can provide a bit of context.

Anyways I don’t think I ever told you about the photos I was able to take over Christmas Break of a collection of slides taken by Pappy (my Dad’s dad).  While the quality of my photos isn’t that great (they were projected on a concrete wall, so in quite a few of them you can see those lines), they were so much fun too look through. Plus when I posted them on Facebook, I ended up connecting  with one of my Dad’s first cousins and a great Aunt (who is rocking the Facebook in her 80s!).  Obviously my favorite ones were those that featured my Dad in them, so here are a few of my favorites from the set.

While not of my father, this picture of Grammy is so beautiful and reminds me of a painting/photograph that I can't put my finger on. But everything about this photo is great, the composition, the light, all of it.

This is apparently what my Dad and his brother did for fun when they were younger. Now of course they do much more sane things like learn to fly airplanes (Eldon) and go on crazy long bicycle trips.

My Dad, literally swinging through the forest.

And of course these slides included more recent ones where my Mom demonstrates just how awesome fashion from the 70s truly was. I want that dress so bad!

Then Tim came over some time in January and helped me dig through a bag of old camera equipment, some one donated to me.  We enjoyed testing the flash.

Of course we managed to drain the batteries in just one evening and I was still seeing oddly color spots the next day.

And then I finally got my hair cut (thanks for all your advice on this post) and this was the result.

It is unbelievably difficult to take self-portraits with my camera, even with a tripod this time. I obviously am missing something important.

Then I made some cupcakes as the left over parts of this awesome Smitten Kitchen recipe.  Who know sour cream would make such a great base for chocolate frosting?

Plus I ended up having leftover orange custard and meringue icing (from my housemate's cake) to work with, so I got a little creative.

Then I had a day off of work and went downtown to the Art Institute with some friends.

The north view from the new pedestrian walkway at the Modern Wing of the Art Institute.

Some of my lovely art viewing companions.

So there you have it a brief update on the photos I have taken, which sadly are not as many as I would like.  However the dreary cold of winter makes taking photo walks much less enjoyable, so I have been more inclined to bake things, read things and watch things.