Hmm, reading PZ’s blog I was somewhat irritated to read something about Ann Coulter. Thankfully it was something saying she’s a moron. Also, apparently, she thinks that people want to have sex with goats. Perhaps that says something about her, or at least explains why no one would want to have sex with her. I think I’d prefer the goat.
Moving… Ethan and I have been moving for almost a week now (far over a week if you include time we were packing up at our old house) and I’m glad we are almost done. I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t get any pleasure from packing my life into boxes, and carting it all the way across the state, then digging it out and trying to reorganize it once again. There is so much that I’m not sure why I have in the first place, but strangely I still don’t want to throw it away.
– On the other hand, while the act of moving sucks, our new apartment is completely awesome. I can’t wait until we’re completely unpacked so we don’t have boxes and piles of crap laying everywhere. We were a little worried about the size of our room because we wanted both of our computers, plus the bed and the chinchillas in the master bedroom. Believe it or not, there is actually room to spare. Even though our new kitchen is physically smaller than our old one, it has so much more useful space. We can actually both work on dinner and not be treading on each other.
– Unfortunately I still have to make at least one more trip out to Morris to pick up the last of our stuff. We left our iron and ironing board, a handful of kitchen stuff, some random stuff from our closet, a vacuum, and lots of plants. There’s probably more stuff I’m not thinking of, but I doubt it will all fit in my car, so I’m trying not to think of it. Egad.
– I guess it’s time to continue my job search in earnest now. That and unpack. Yay.
Busy, busy. Ethan and I finally made arrangements for a U-Haul trailer so we can move out in a few days. We originally wanted a truck so we didn’t have to find another vehicle to tow it with, but found out that the cost would be astronomical (something like $300 for one trip, not including gas). Instead we thought of what vehicles would be available for dragging a trailer around and came up with three: Ethan’s dad’s pickup, which would have involved driving five hours in each direction to pick up the truck and drop it off again (when the vehicle in question gets barely 15 mpg, that’s not good, especially when gas costs almost $3.00/gallon); my dad’s pickup, which is really small and gutless, but my mom wasn’t too excited about that because “it would be really hard on it”; and finally my parents’ suburban. Suburbans are neat in some ways, like the ability to take the seats out and cram lots and lots of stuff in them. They’re also unneat when they’re quite old and rusting apart, in questionable condition, and the tabs are expired. This will be an exciting move I think. Perhaps we should take dad with us in case we get pulled over for being in a vehicle with expired tabs that is barely roadworthy…
– Last night we went to see X3 which was better than predicted, though still pretty lacking compared to its predecessors. I’ll admit I have a big crush on Hugh Jackman and his ass-kicking skills which does make any movie he’s in a little more enjoyable.
– I should probably go get ready to face the day. My parents are coming up for the day (again) to repair our very badly broken screen door. Maybe they’ll buy some more paint too… Off I go
My parents came to start ‘fixing up’ the house this weekend. This involved (so far) painting the walls and cupboards in the bathroom upstairs, fixing the front screen door, patching the walls in the basement, moving the appliances in the kitchen so we could clean behind them, replace the melted plastic tiles next to the stove (it appears that someone had to do this before, as there were already several missing from behind the stove… why someone thought to put plastic tiles on the wall next to a stove, I’ll never know, but at least two people have decided to keep up the ridiculousness instead of getting rid of it altogether), cleaning the ceiling and walls in the kitchen and listening to my mother tell me over and over again how filthy everything is. Fun times.
– To make the weekend even more exciting, the noise and commotion confused and upset the cats, and then Peeve basically lost it when he saw the stove in the middle of the kitchen (one wonders why that is so frightening) and has since alienated his brother and is in a very unhappy mood.
– There were a couple of high points in all the unpleasantness though. We ate at the new Italian restaurant in town, which has some very yummy food, and then we rented a movie that none of us had heard of: 11:14 which was very random, yet enjoyable (if you like watching people be horribly wounded or otherwise punished for their stupidity).
Well, my grades are finally all back, so it’s official — I graduated. That’s another of those things that have been nagging me for no reason. The horrible feeling that somehow I failed one of my classes and I’d have to take at least one more course to graduate has been present in the back of my mind. Thankfully that’s not the case. So go me! I’m done.
– Steph is mostly moved out now, with just a few of her belongings remaining, and Serrah has completely moved out. I discovered after she left that apparently some people can graduate from college without knowing how to vacuum a room properly. Along with clogging one of our vacuums by sucking up a hair clip and some receipts (which led to her just pushing more garbage around, I’m sure) she left all kinds of things all over the floor which were not exactly vacuum friendly, like bobby pins. After picking up downstairs, I went over it with our newer bagless vacuum and filled the canister. In disbelief, I emptied it and started again. All told, I filled the canister three times! Apparently that’s how dirty that carpet gets when you only vacuum it intermittently (and not very well) for two years. The poor carpet needs a shampooing because there are multiple mystery spots, but I don’t have a carpet cleaner, so that will have to wait.
– I’m sort of on vacation (except for the bursts of frenzied cleaning) as I don’t have a job, I’m in the middle of nowhere and school is all done. Really I should be trying to find a job and finish planning my wedding, but I’m still feeling rather beat, and It’s hard to plan a wedding from so far away. So for now, I guess I will continue to be a bum and play video games. Fun fun.
Well, here it is: my last day of finals, ever. I’m not too worried about my last exam, as it’s open book, open notes and I’ve done moderately well in the class. I also am having a farewell lunch at work today. That will be interesting.
– This weekend Ethan and I are headed to the cities, though I’m not sure how we’ll get the cats fed. Steph or Serrah (or both) might be moved out by then and then we’ll have another set of keys if anyone is feeling generous and catly. I’m not sure why I want to go to the cities so badly, but man, I don’t want to stay here. Since Ethan’s sister is graduating, and she lives in the cities, Ethan’s parents will be up so we’ll be dining with his family once or twice over the weekend. That should be fun as usual. It does make me wonder what Ethan thinks when he goes to dinner with my family, especially my extended family…
– Last night we watched Dune (the 1984 version) which was… not good. I can’t say I had high hopes, but it was really a disappointment from the book. Next in our queue is a newer version, possibly put forth by the SciFi channel. While SciFi channel movies scream ‘crappy’ I am crossing my fingers that the newer version will be better.
This weekend I tried using bright red hair henna after using up my red henna. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a huge difference. This ‘bright’ stuff might be a little bit lighter in color perhaps? I think I’ll stick to the plain red stuff in the future. I like the crazy copper color that it gives me for the first few days. I’m a strange fan of really vibrant colors, and hair that seems to glow with an inner light.
– Well, I’m up early on the Monday of my finals, and I have to work this afternoon, but I have some assignments to finish, and so here I sit in the dungeon, without any tea in me, waiting for a simulation to finish so I can write a few paragraphs about it. Fun. I’m having a little trouble not nodding off onto the keyboard…
– In random but possibly exciting news, I think I may have finished registering for gifts! Ethan and I are now registered at Williams Sonoma (at the behest of my mother and aunt) and at Bed, Bath and Beyond, because it seemed like a good idea at the time and I thought we should have decent towels. I’m counting on at least a few people just giving us money, so I’m refusing to stress myself out over the rather small number of things on either registry. Anyway, if they start to look really picked over, I can always add more, right?
– On a similar note, I ordered the invitations this morning. Spending that much money on paper makes me feel physically ill. Maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t had my tea yet. Ooh, speaking of tea, if you want to buy us something for the wedding, but aren’t excited by the stuff on the registries, feel free to hop down to Adagio Teas and buy something there. Yummy tea. There’s also all kinds of neat little tea things there, like brewing pitchers and tea sets. Actually, I think Ethan may leave me if I get more tea, so maybe that’s not such a good idea. Hopefully in our new apartment there will be a cabinet just for tea…
– Well it looks like my simulation finished so I need to get back to work.
Today is my last day of classes as an undergraduate (assuming all goes to plan). I’m actually way too physically and mentally exhausted to really enjoy it, and I have one paper, one problem set, one presentation and three final exams to finish before I’m home free. Hopefully after that I can drive down to the cities and just start begging for jobs. Or dresses.
– Somehow I think my life isn’t going to slow down until after July 22nd. The more I think about all of these things, the more I want to elope. Really I want to be married to Ethan, I don’t care about a ceremony, or a dinner, or another dinner or a shower or a dress or gifts. The whole idea of it just makes me feel tired.
– Heh, the best part is, people keep asking how they can help, which should be a good thing, but when I tell someone “try to find x,” instead of coming back with suggestions, everyone just comes back harassing me about what I want. I have trouble deciding what I want for dinner on any given night. How should I know what kind of flowers I want? I don’t even like flowers.
– I’m starting to seriously doubt that people get excited about their own weddings, unless they paid someone else large sums of money to just make the whole thing work without their thinking about it. Or maybe if they’re into the planning thing and they don’t have any other obligations, like work, school, or a social life of any kind. Bleah.
– By the way, if you think you are feeling a little too secure about your body to be an American female, go to a dress shop and try on a few dresses. You’ll realize just how far from manequin-like you are, and then not want to wear anything but sweatshirts and pajama pants for a few days. (clearly I’m having a good day)
I put up pictures of my ring. It’s really hard to take pictures of your own hand apparently, so for one of them I put it back in the case. The pictures really don’t do it justice, since my camera isn’t good at close up images and a flash just isn’t the same as sunlight. Too bad it’s cloudy out, otherwise I could give the neighbors reason to believe I’m nuts and take pictures of my hand out on my porch…
– In completely unrelated news, I just heard back from our prospective apartment building and we’re approved to move in. This sounds silly but I feel really relieved. For some reason I had this horrible feeling that they would decide we weren’t worthy of their awesome, fantastic apartment, but apparently we are. Unfortunately we still don’t know when we’ll be able to move in, but they said they would let us know as soon as they do when our apartment will be free. (dances)
I found the coolest website while trying to find nutritional information about barley: Nutrition Data. Think of almost any food and you can see a really fun breakdown of vitamins, minerals, fat, protein and whether it’s a good food for weight loss or weight gain, not to mention how filling it is, and what foods have complimentary amino acids. How nuts. I’ve sort of been looking up foods for the past hour or so. Perhaps it is time to pull myself away…