Rancid-Tea

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Well, I had quite the weekend. Ethan left for Madison to attend his Grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary, while I stayed here to attend classes and work… except that I have neither of those things on Saturday or Sunday, so my weekend became very dull. I ended up playing a ridiculous and rather disgusting amount of Puzzle Pirates which is just plain sad. I did attend the Vagina Monologues which were very entertaining and even sort of comforting.

– I’m at work right now and apparently the thermostat has had the electronic version of an aneurism. It is cooling off the building, unfortunately with me in it. Tomorrow I may have to bring a thermometer (and a blanket) to work. I really don’t think it’s necessary to expend energy cooling a building when it is below freezing outside. No wonder this company is losing money.

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This weekend I’m planning (if I can get someone to go with me) to go the Vagina Monologues. Last night after watching North Country, Steph and Ethan noticed an anti-VM poster, which caught their eyes. I decided to investigate this matter further, wondering what sort of group is against female empowerment and expression. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s a conservative “women should be in the home” kind of group, called Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute. What bothers me is that it pretends to be pro-feminism with slogans like “women aren’t just their bodies” and “women aren’t victims,” but then when you get to the heart of the matter, they’re basically saying that women shouldn’t be proud of stepping out from traditional female roles. Real empowering. Maybe instead of having an income while Ethan goes to grad school, I’ll just stay home with the cats and cook and clean. I’m sure that will be rewarding as well as financially sound. After all, sacrificing my femininity for a career is actually less empowering in the long run…

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I made an appointment at David’s Bridal for the 11th. There will be dress trying and vows to exercise and diet by all. Don’t I make dress shopping sound like fun?? I did actually go work out last night, so I can’t feel too guilty, but I need many more trips to the gym before I’ll feel completely okay in a dress. I could be like some insane girls I knew in high school who fasted for a week before prom. I bet that made the dancing and whatever else happens at prom really fun. I think I’ll just try to eat more oatmeal and jog occasionally. I’d really like to get the original Buns of Steel, but it only comes on VHS and I barely have a VCR… I wonder if I could get one of those home video to DVD places to make a copy for me…

– I found a really neat listing for a job that I would love to have in the Twin Cities. I even wrote up a cover letter (which is amazing considering my general lack of motivation recently; just look at how often I’ve been updating my site). The trouble is I’ve never written a cover letter before, so I’m afraid it is somehow stupid or inappropriate and I would rather impress someone than have them immediately discard my letter and resume and move on to the next lucky boy or girl. I’m just trying to keep up the idea that it will all work out in the end.

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In our on going attempt to expand our culinary horizons, Ethan and I decided to make pad thai for dinner. I found a recipe in one of our cook books and we went to it. The results: if a pad thai recipe calls for ketchup (and this is especially true if you don’t like ketchup) don’t make it. Sometimes you just can’t judge a recipe by the book that it’s in (which in this case has had some surprisingly good recipes).

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Ethan and I watched The Aviator last night. It was very, very long. If the portrayal of Howard Hughes was at all accurate, then he was apparently a very unwell, but good person. I’m really curious what kind of psychiatric diagnosis he had. That poor, poor man.

– I’m sort of wiped out from these last few days, though not for any good reason. I just feel tired. I’m hoping I can get a good sleep in over the weekend and recover, but the weekend isn’t for days yet, so in the mean time, my semi-conscious stupor will continue.

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Yesterday I had recovered enough from my cold that I was able to give blood, unfortunately my plans to bring Steph with were destroyed when she came down with something… I think the lack of blood makes me more susceptible to caffeine, as the tea I had this morning made me completely jumpy. It might be very potent tea, this was the first time I’ve tried it and some tea is just stronger than others… The tea was in fact my latest order from Adagio.com and it’s fantastic. We were out of earl grey, so I figured why not try some that didn’t come from a supermarket. All I can say is that this is the most amazing earl grey I’ve ever tasted. It smells really rich and flavorful. I also got a sampler of green teas, some black-apple, black-lime and black-lemon. I’ve tasted the black-lime and it’s really good too. (If I weren’t hopped up on caffeine would I be babbling about tea for this long?)

– I think I have a weekend planned out for dress shopping, but I need to talk to Wren, Beth and Roxie first to make sure that it works for them. Hopefully we can all get together on the weekend of March 11th and get dresses…

– There were many other things I had thought of to say, but my tea-rattled brain can’t think of all of them right now.

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I’ve had a sore throat for almost a week now that just keeps getting worse. I finally lost my voice this morning, though it’s made a partial recovery since breakfast. I think I really just need rest, but I keep waking up at about 6 each morning with throat pain. After that I roll around a bit trying to fall back asleep. I guess I should feel lucky that this is the first bad cold I’ve had this year, but I’d still rather just not be ill at all..

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It was warm enough on Friday for me to ride my bike to work and back. It felt really nice to do something that was like exercise. I still really need to go back to the gym and get in better shape. I just feel so unhealthy lately…

– In response to Beth’s response, I think I found a dress that would be tolerable on all fronts: Halter tea-length. Amazingly it seems to be from David’s Bridal, which means if we want that one, we can actually get it. Craziness. Well I’ll have to get a weigh in from everyone. I don’t think it could make it into the Ugly Dresses Website anyway. It’s possible I’m just having an aneurysm.

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Yesterday I suddenly felt motivated to work on my quilt again, so I pulled everything out and ironed the top, then decided I needed safety pins and perhaps a rotary cutter/mat/ruler. I headed down to the fabric shop where I think they undercharged me a great deal for the mat (usually priced around $60 – $70, but I got mine for a ridiculously low $44) and then came back home to get started. All that was left to do was construct the back (sew two pieces of fabric together) construct the batting (sew two pieces of thinsulate together) and then put all three layers together. I finished the batting and then pinned together the two pieces for the back and realized that I have either used up my red thread or it was lost to the cats as a play thing. Grr. Now I have to go back and buy thread. I’m thinking of somehow quilting the top instead of using ties this time. the quilting seems to hold everything in place better and on some older quilts I have, the ties have pulled through, leaving little holes in the blanket, and nothing holding the layers in place. Adding to that, I am torn between binding the edges (lots more work, plus more fabric) or not. Stupid indecision! At least progress is once again being made, so perhaps the end is in sight.

– On a completely unrelated note, the 10 minute rule almost took effect, meaning my prof was nearly 10 minutes late to class. There’s some official rule that students are excused from class if the prof is not there 10 minutes in. For a 50 minute class, that’s an awfully large portion of the class where you just sit there and wait. To make it even more interesting, the class in question only has two students including myself, so we simply sat there, discussing whether or not we should leave, when our prof finally showed up with just a few seconds to spare. He then admitted the reason he was late was because he was finishing up reading the section we were supposed to have read for that class. Sometimes I have to wonder what exactly is going on…

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Hmm… It’s windy out. Very windy. I’ll have to go recover the garbage can soon, which is making its way out to the street from behind our house, and making good progress too. Scratch that, it’s out there. Brr. Thankfully it’s a little over freezing, so the wind isn’t deathly cold or anything.

– Ethan and I actually did something that might possibly be considered wedding planning last night. My mother had emailed us about a possible place to have the reception, so we called another place we had been thinking about and got prices. We still haven’t reserved anything, which we should do, and rather soon. I figure we can’t send out invitations until we know where we’re going. On the other hand, we don’t have a guest list, and need to figure out the 50 or fewer people coming to the ceremony and the 100 or fewer people coming to the reception. Blasted planning!

– Half out of boredom and half just to see if I could, I started a new website, Rate-My-Shop.com. There is still a lot of work left to do on it, but I was getting antsy about the domain name for some reason so I went ahead and registered. Maybe for now I should just put a huge COMING SOON banner on it. That’s the main reason I haven’t been working on this site too much. I have a few things I really need to update though, so hopefully I’ll find some free time and some motivation soon.