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I got a shipment from Adagio Teas today. I’m currently drinking some blood orange tea which is quite marvelous. The other teas I bought smell wonderful and I can’t wait to try them…
I got a shipment from Adagio Teas today. I’m currently drinking some blood orange tea which is quite marvelous. The other teas I bought smell wonderful and I can’t wait to try them…
More exciting news — I got a job interview for Friday. Unfortunately this means that I will have to miss my classes, but since a job is very important to me right now, I can’t complain too loudly.
– Also pretty exciting (or neat anyway) I signed up for a produce share for this summer, through Easy Bean Farm which means that we will have fresh, organic produce all summer, for much less than we would spend on unripe, unfresh, factory farmed produce at the grocery store. The best part is it helped me find a co-op that is pretty close to where we’ll be living, it’s only 6 miles away, so it’s conceivable that Ethan and I could bike there. That might require one or both of us getting a rack for our bike, which is something I’ve kind of wanted for awhile but have never been willing to fork out for.
I had a crazy, exciting and BUSY weekend. It started on Friday when Ethan totally surprised me by giving me a ring! Apparently this is only a surprise to me as he managed to tell everyone but me about this. It’s really pretty with rubies and leaves… I’ll have to put up some pictures.
– Shortly after the ring-giving, Ethan and I headed to the cities for some apartment shopping. We brought our bikes to Trail Cycle to get a tune up for me and an overhaul for Ethan. The man there estimated the cost at around $40 – $50. He offered to stay open late for us on Saturday since it would be difficult (or maybe impossible) to pick up the bikes sooner since we were apartment viewing all day. When we actually went to pick up the bikes, the bill came to a whopping $16.85. That’s not a typo. If you live in the Twin Cities, I have to recommend this place for bike repair.
– We looked at one duplex and three apartments on Saturday and while the duplex was kind of dumpy, the apartments were all nice. We chose one that is just unbelievably nice. It has in unit washer/dryer and dishwasher, two bathrooms, a community room and an exercise room, plus a community vehicle and it’s right across the road from one of the Hiawatha Light Rail stations. It really is just a fabulous place. I can’t wait to move in.
– On Saturday evening Wren hennaed my hair which turned a brilliant red (hooray) and Ethan and I finally went back to my parents’ house to watch TV…
– Sunday morning we went to my aunt Chrissie’s place for brunch and then after stuffing ourselves, we headed back home. Not too much has happened since then, except that I still don’t have a job (boo) and I’m tired of looking (more boo) and I still have homework to do (uber boo).
In totally unhelpful news, I bought a peppermill today. This is decidedly neat since we’ve only had pre-ground pepper. I discovered that pepper is strangely expensive in comparison to other spices (like ground coriander and Hungarian paprika for instance) and was informed by the co-op volunteer that pepper plants only grow well in a small region of the world and used to be much more expensive in the very long ago. Very interesting I think.
– Along with that purchase, I bought a small, inexpensive food scale, which is handy for those recipes we have that call for 4 oz of something. It’s much easier to just weigh it than trying to find a weight to volume conversion table, and then end up doing much more conversion because they only have grams to teaspoons and you have to get ounces to cups…
– Ethan and I ordered a few sample invitations. I think the online stores are sort of underhanded, since they have all these pictures of invitations where you can’t see the print at all (much less any fine detail) and then just tell you how much they cost. I wonder if anyone just orders something when they can’t tell what it says. I’m starting to think that going to a place where you can sit down and look at the invitations might be better. I also ordered a catalogue, so maybe that will help.
– Strangely, I just finished lab, much much earlier than I expected to, and now I’m going to go home and bang my head against the wall over various other things that need doing — By the way, Wren, if I’m in the cities next weekend, could you help me henna my hair? If the weather is nice we could do it outside and avoid getting henna everywhere.
I encounter a homework assignment yesterday that made me want to get drunk. I know that’s a really bad thing, looking at homework and wishing to dash your sobriety with a little booze, but damnit, what a terrible assignment. I finished the homework (how well I did is yet to be discovered, but I did finish it) and then decided to take off my morning classes today. I need a break.
– I ended up talking to my mother for a bit and she gave me mixed messages about how I need to get a move on planning the wedding, but I better do well in school and I better not put off my education to find a job or plan a wedding. I really just need more hours in my day I think. Many more hours.
– She did point out a few things I could register for, and so that’s one more thing to add to my plate. Things yet to take care of:
I wouldn’t doubt that there are other things I haven’t mentioned. Egad. My mother had me looking at $1000 cook wear. I don’t know what to think about that. That is something in my “maybe someday” fantasies, but I can’t expect people to buy that for me, can I? She said I can always register at a fancy place and a cheap place so that people with different budgets have different options, but I can’t bring myself to register for anything at Target. Maybe Sears. We could pick out a blender or something. I don’t know. I think this whole thing is making me kind of crazy. And verbose. More so than usual.
– In a completely unrelated note, Firefox turned to crap a couple of days ago for no apparent reason and refused to recover. I reinstalled it, but to no avail. Finally I deleted everything I had related to Firefox (extensions, bookmarks, the works) and reinstalled it again, and now it seems to be back to normal, without a few of my favorite necessities…
Ethan’s parents visited this weekend which (after quite a lot of cleaning around the house) was a pleasant visit. With very little to do around here, we sat and chatted over dinner, and in the morning met for breakfast at a cafe in town.
– I recently ordered some things from WebVitamins which showed up about three days after I ordered. I got a couple of henna colors to try out and some Tea Tree Oil. Tea Tree Oil has this lovely smell and some medicinal properties, and I’m hoping that it may just be the final cure for my acne. I’ve only been using it for three days now, but I think that no new zits have started to crop up. Obviously I’ll have to keep an eye on this and see how long this lasts. I have to finish getting ready for classes now, though…
Interesting fact of the day: When translating English to Russian, material tends to end up 10 – 20% longer due to the complexity of the Russian language. When translated from Russian to English however, the material tends to remain the same length.
Hmm, today is turning out to be a good day. As I was leaving for my last class of the day, I got a package from UPS which turned out to be my shoes that I left at Ethan’s sister’s place when I was in the cities. Since it has snowed a couple of times since then and those are my only tennis shoes, I’m glad to have them back. When I got to class, I didn’t really feel like being there and a few others in class expressed a similar feeling. As it turns out, our prof didn’t show up, so we took advantage of the 10 minute rule and left. The only downside to this is that I spent a good deal of yesterday trying to finish the assignment that was due in class today. Not really my problem, though.
– On Friday Ethan and I went over to Jessi and Chris’s place for St. Patty’s day. We had beer and boiled dinner (sauerkraut, potatoes and carrots boiled to doneness) and spent the evening hanging out.
– On Saturday, we continued being social, and went to the bowling alley with Angie and Matt. I didn’t bowl well, but had a lot of fun trying. Afterward we went to Don’s and ate unhealthy but yummy food. With Angie’s prodding, we (maybe) finished our guest list, which we really need to sort through and figure out who is going to the ceremony and who is just going to the reception, or if we have few enough people that they can all go to both. Wouldn’t that be nice. After that we watched The Weatherman which was a strange mix of funny and serious, but was pretty entertaining overall.
– I can’t wait until we get the next disk of Six Feet Under. Ethan and I have been watching that through Netflix and are flat out addicted to the show. We actually sat through seven straight episodes when we got disks 2 and 3.
– It’s been awhile since my last update I guess. I really want to finish school as soon and possible and move on to having a job that I don’t have to worry about when I’m not there. Also, having one responsibility (work) versus several (work and 4 classes) will be a relief. Trying to remember what I have to do for each class and what I have going on at work can be a bit overwhelming, and lately has been rather taxing, especially with a dozen people expecting me to find a job and plan a wedding, from almost 200 miles from where I expect both of those things to happen (sigh).
Well, I think overall the dress fitting yesterday went well. Even though I was very specific on the phone that I was only looking for bridesmaid dresses, the consultant (or saleswoman or whoever she was) seemed somewhat surprised upon our arrival when we spotted the dress already picked out and flocked over to it. She even asked if this was for the bridesmaids or the bride. Shortly after we were whisked off to a changing room (which strangely had no mirrors inside, but was walled in mirrors outside) and everyone got to try on their prospective dress. I believe we determined that even though a few adjustments may need to be made, the dress style was a hit overall.
– I almost made it out of there unscathed when someone spotted a dress outside (next to a giant sign promoting their $99 dress sale) and said I had to try it on and I was dragged back into the store. The dress (which was NOT $99) did not fit me, and had a long trail. I had already explained to our sales rep that the wedding would be outside and that I didn’t want a dress that any part touched the ground. I’m not sure why all of the dresses were so long. I’ve never in my life had trouble with things being too long for me, ever. She brought out dress after dress that was both too long (I had to lift the front so I didn’t step on it and trip) and didn’t fit (apparently women my size should have breasts about 3 cup sizes bigger). She did manage to add insult to injury twice by first putting me in a dress that seemed to fit (except the chest) and then saying that I would actually need one size larger, then she brought me some fun foam pads to stick into the dress to try to fill the void… which didn’t come close to helping. The foam things did look nice under my tank top after I took off the dresses though. Maybe I should have kept them as a free gift.
– Thankfully I was allowed to leave after that, and I went to see a movie with Angie and Wren, which helped me forget the day’s events. I even ran into Wren’s parents, which is always fun. We saw ‘Failure to Launch’ (as long as Ethan is at home and I’m out here, I might as well see a chick flick, right?) which was pretty funny and had a strangely good soundtrack.
– After the movie, Wren went back home and Angie and I went to The Orchid, which is a really popular vietnamese restaurant right next to the theater. We weren’t very hungry, but I had told her it was really good, so we decided to give it a shot. We all had a rather disastrous lunch, which I forgot to mention, so it seemed some sort of makeup meal was in order. The Orchid had wonderful food. I got the spicy tofu and Angie got stir fried vegetables with beef (I think) and we both thought our food was delicious. I got some hot jasmine tea there too and thought that was very yummy.
When we both decided to box up our food, we headed back to my parents house and both talked on the phone with our guys and then went to sleep. It was a long day (and I haven’t even told you the first half of it). I’m happy to be heading home today, to see my Ethan again. I’m sure Angie feels the same way about her Matt.
Yesterday became sort of interesting when the power went out in most of the city… stranding us in the dark for over a half an hour. I was at work and while the generator kicked in to power the servers, the rest of the building was in darkness and silence, including the part that has an emergency light that is supposed to turn on in the event of a power outage. In the process of getting it down to see what was the matter, I found myself standing on a reel of cable, tugging at a light with a screwdriver trying to pry the tabs loose. As you can imagine it ended somewhat badly with the light suddenly springing loose and then injuring me several times as I tried to catch it during its descent. The light survived in spite of the fact that I failed to catch it, and my thumb survived with several nasty looking but more or less superficial wounds. The eventual diagnosis for the light: the battery was mostly lifeless. After that Brad and Josh had extension cord fun with a construction light until the power eventually came back up.