I am participating in NPW's Choose Your Own Blogventure. The full story should be posted at 10am EDT. My section of the story is below the jump, but if you'd like to begin at the beginning of the story and choose your own blogventure, you can start here. (Or, if you'd like to read previous insane CYOBs, see here or here.)...
(I didn't make this. Click the image for the source.)...
I made a New Year's Resolution to complete the AFI list, but then almost immediately took a break from the AFI to watch as many Oscar movies as possible in February. Then it took me until June to pick it up again, but I've made some decent progress since then! It's strange to think that I'm in the 90s now. What will I do when this project is over? I've been working on it since 2005! 93/100 Network (#66)I went into this movie knowing nothing about it except the "mad as hell" scene and a vague idea that it had...
So it's about time I sat down and wrote about my experience trying out for Jeopardy!, since almost a month has passed and I keep telling bits of the story over and over again. Some parts have already been told on Twitter (these are copied below), but the whole thing needed fleshing out. So finally it's here! Lucky you. Oh, so THAT's why I wasn't nervous about presenting about #NAFSA09... I was saving it all up for Monday's Jeopardy! audition. Eek eek eek! - 2:58 PM May 30th I went out to the NAFSA conference May 25-29. I flew back...
I have some kind of cold/virus/death plague, which has been with me since I came back from Chicago, if not longer. Right now, I am in the phlegmy-fatigued stage¹. I am feeling so tired/lazy right now that I don't have the energy to fill up my hot water bottle and am instead hoping for a stray cat to find its way into my apartment and go to sleep on my chest. I don't even know if a hot water bottle-slash-cat is good for anything I have, but at this point I'm about to start resorting to mustard poultices and eyes...
Congratulations! You have been selected for a follow-up appointment at an upcoming Jeopardy! contestant search for the Chicago area, exclusively for those who successfully passed the online test. This is the next step in becoming a Jeopardy! contestant. We have reserved the following appointment for you... I took the Jeopardy! online test on January 27th, and after looking at the answer key someone had posted on the Ken Jennings messageboards, decided that I had failed by one or two questions. Ah well, I thought, There's always next year. It would seem that I had passed after all, because I received...
I dreamt last night that my dad and I were driving along Platt Road when I saw a giant tapir by the side of the road. I made my dad turn around and go around the block somehow so that we could see it again and I could take a picture, but apparently the tapir was a sort of were-tapir or shape-shifter, so sometimes it was a tapir and sometimes it was human and sometimes it was somewhere in between. When we got back around, we got out of the car to take a picture and it turned part-human and...
There was an Internet quiz going around several months (years?) ago that was supposed to tell you who was Your TV Boyfriend. I took the quiz and it told me My TV Boyfriend was Jim Halpert. I was less than enthused, especially because this was sometime in season 3, where Jim was kind of a jerk or season 4, where he was just boring. So it got me thinking about who would be My TV Boyfriend if I - rather than an Internet quiz - were doing the picking. I had, after all, just eliminated The Ultimate TV Boyfriend, so...
Here is a Wordle of commonly-used words in this blog:...
Turns out I made way more progress on the AFI list in January than I'd thought. 88/100 The French Connection (#70)I think this mostly made the AFI Top 100 list because the car chase was influential on later movie car chases. There wasn't much to the movie, other than chasing. I didn't get to know or care about any of the characters, because it was just chase chase chase. I did like the subway scene, though, with Doyle and Charnier trying to chase/lose each other without letting on that they were aware of each other. Jaws (#48)SO SCARY. Good thing...
In the last few weeks, I think I have been tagged via blog, via Twitter and via Facebook for every "Seven Interesting Things About Me", "Ten Honest Facts About Me" and "Twenty-Five Things About Me That May Or May Not Be Interesting Or Factual" meme known to man. So let this be my response to all three of those: Forty-two Things About Me That May Be Interesting But Are Likely Very Dull Indeed I just made a gigantic "cup" of tea for myself in my giant 20 oz soup mug. It is very hard to drink 20 oz. of tea...
It's that time of year again, when I set aside the long-running AFI Top 100 project and instead go on a crazed rampage, trying to watch as many Oscar nominees as possible. If I were really smart, I would spread this out a bit more through the year, watching movies that are likely to be nominated before the official nominations are announced. I never have much interest in watching dramas unless I think it's going to help me in Oscar pools, though, so I'm generally not motivated to watch them until it's official. So instead, it's a late-January/early-to-mid-February movie-going extravaganza....
AFI progress review time! 84/100 The Godfather, Part II - December 2008On Flixster I said: Poor Fredo. No one should have to die in that hat.Very enjoyable to watch. I like the interweaving of the Vito/Michael stories. and some stranger got mad and was like, "Phew I'm glad I'm reading this AFTER I saw the film!" I didn't say anything about how he died¹, and while Fredo dying is important to Michael's character development, it's not like knowing that he dies is going to ruin the film for you.... did it?Maybe they thought they could use telepathy to communicate?High Noon...
Some people seem to think that New Year's resolutions are the sort of thing that should be announced, like, in the first couple of days of January. Well, here at srah blah blah, we ain't people¹. So here is our interrelated web of resolution: WHEREAS It is the beginning of a new year; and WHEREAS "People" expect this sort of thing; and WHEREAS I should probably get up off the couch and work on some self-improvement; therefore be it RESOLVED: That I will fit into this one pair of jeans that I can technically fit into now, and can even...
Yesterday, a friend mentioned something about having to have blood drawn and I almost responded, "I have to get a whole bunch of blood drawn to test for different things and they said that they couldn't use the same blood for the different tests so I'd have to get, like, 6 vials drawn." Then I remembered that I went to the eye doctor the day before and he said nothing at all about blood and I don't think I've been to another doctor in at least four months (and that was the dentist). So apparently I dreamt about all that...
I dreamt last night that my family went to visit my aunt and uncle in Virginia. We either walked the whole way there or drove most of the way and walked once we were in town. We were walking down this street and about 12 out of 15 people on the street were wearing University of Michigan t-shirts. Then we saw this guy in an Ohio State jacket and said, "Oh look, there's someone to break the trend!" but then he took it off and was wearing a Michigan sweatshirt underneath. Then my parents asked for directions from some teenaged...
I got many exciting Christmas presents this holiday season, but two in particular that I think the readers of this blog might be interested in. First, I got a package addressed "To: Sarah; From: Kota." Our family usually has little jokes/hints on the gift tags, but this name meant nothing to me, so I was intrigued. I opened up the box and it was the GPS that I'd asked for: Hooray! I still didn't understand the whole "Kota" thing, though. I lifted up the GPS... And discovered a plastic triceratops hidden among the GPS accessories. Then I remembered that Kota...
It's been over two years since I went on an American Film Institute Top 100-watching kick, but I thought I would check my progress now, since Alfie did. I'm at 81, if my calculations are correct. I think these are the only AFI Top 100 (1998 list) movies that I've seen since my last update: Lawrence of Arabia - August 2007I had seen Lawrence of Arabia, but I wasn't sure if I'd seen it all in one sitting. Now I have, and on the big screen, too! If you have an opportunity, see it on the big screen. Annie Hall...
I think one of the reasons Star Wars episodes IV-VI are so appealing is that we have all been (or known someone who is) a whiny teenager, a kind of bitchy "princess", a smart aleck, a know-it-all, or the crazy old man down the street with a secret past. One of the MANY ways in which Star Wars episodes I-III failed is that I don't identify with someone who's a rebellious slave, or the teenaged ruler of their own country and/or planet¹. ¹ Except in that all teenagers think they are the ruler of their own country and/or planet and...
I love Scattergories¹. I rule at Scattergories². I love being given a letter and having to come up with words that start with that letter³. So the dealio with this meme is: You leave a comment on this post, and I'll assign you a letter. You write about ten things you love that begin with your assigned letter, and post it at your place. When people comment on your list, you give them a letter, and the chain continues on and on. Allthewine did N, and gave me the letter B. Breakfast. The best meal of the day, any time...
I dreamt last night that my family and I were driving north across the Mackinac Bridge (for the uninformed, this is the bridge that connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan) and then next thing I knew, we were taking a ferry into Sydney Harbor in Australia (but I couldn't find the Opera House anywhere because there were too many amusement park rides on the shore). We got off the boat and then we were in Turkey, and we were mad because the airline had lost our bags. Then I realized I had no idea how long this trip...
I have completed NaBloPoMo! Many thanks to srahfam and my friend Jason, whose time with me was sometimes interrupted by my sudden screams of "Oh god, I haven't blogged yet today! Get me to a computer!" Yet-unguessed lyrics (I'll give you until midnight EST tomorrow night to get these, before I announce the winner and the songs you don't guess): But suddenly I feel the shining sun/ Before I knew it this dream was all goneLong ago in days of yore/ It all began with a god named Thor/ There were Vikings and boats/ And some plans for a furniture...
My family went to the Sheraton for brunch this morning, but apparently all of our regular waitpeople had enough seniority to take the Thanksgiving weekend off. Our waitress, rather than saying, "Earl Grey tea all around?" like usual, asked us if anyone wanted coffee. What what what?! What is the point of being ludicrous regulars if tales of our orders and our foibles are spread to most - but not all - of the staff? "She must be new," we concluded. "N00b!" I said to Alfie. "Rookie of the Year," she responded. Then more constructively we determined, "We'll break her...
In case you wondered what my reunion was like: Cristal poppin' in the stretch Navigator [Champagne is available for $20 a bottle. Who knew Charley's had champagne? I did not partake.] We got food everywhere, as if the party was catered [We lurked around the food table early in the evening and picked out pizza sticks and quesadillas with individual forks because there were no tongs. Did they ever get tongs? It occurs to me I never found out.] We got fellas to my left, honeys on my right [Sure, if you want to call them that. Both genders were...
I'm going to my ten-year high school reunion tonight. I'm keeping my expectations nice and low, since a) ten years might not be enough to make attending a reunion worthwhile and b) there's no budget, so the "hey there's a reunion" notifications seem to have been completely word-of-mouth. Therefore, not only are many people I'd like to see not attending, many of them probably don't even know there's a reunion. Anyway, this should be interesting. I'm going with two of my best and oldest friends, who I've kept in close contact with over the years, so if need be, we'll...
Good luck finding something to read on the Internet today. We will have to depend on the rest of the world to create content while America is busy stuffing itself and its turkeys and eagles and seals, etc. So American readers, if you are reading this today, get the hell off the Internet and get back to your patriotic duty of gorging yourself. International readers, if you are reading this today, get the hell on the Internet and write me something to read tomorrow when I'm rolling around and moaning and clutching my swollen stomach....
I anticipated this voyage home with baited breath. At each stop upon my journey north, I thought, "Michigan! O land of plenty! I return again to feast upon your bounty and to experience the rich culture of my native land!" I brought very little from That Place Below with me on my voyage, knowing that I would be provided for in Michigan. And so it passed that I brought neither shampoo nor conditioner with me. And lo! There was shampoo in abundance, but there was no conditioner to be found, for a terrible creature that roams this land had used...
I bet gas stations are kicking themselves now for investing so much money in extra fours. (Maybe it will go down to $1.44 and justify some of the expense.)...
Recently my friends discussed the topic of Assortment Twins and Assortment Compatibility. For example, my friend Jen and I both like the cream soda and butterscotch Dum Dum pops best, so we're Assortment Twins, whereas my friend Jason only likes the fruit flavored Dum Dums, so we're almost Assortment Compatible, except we have to find someone to eat the nasty root beer ones. So Jen and I can compliment each other on each other's great taste, but Jason and I can actually share an assortment. If anyone would like to test their Assortment Twinning/Compatibility with me, here are some of...
I went to IKEA today to look for a particular object (I'd tell you what, but it's a Christmas present). It's the first time that I've ever done this, as I usually go to IKEA and end up browsing through the whole store, but this time we arrived an hour before closing and weren't sure whether to look in the "kitchen and dining" area or the "cooking and eating" area of the stores, which are on two different floors. I went to the cooking/eating area first, but couldn't find the object anywhere. So I asked two IKEA employees where to...
Still waiting on that call from NASA, although we managed to lose last week when I was in Indiana and win against Minnesota while I was in my apartment building, so my theory about only winning when I'm outside Ohio is now kaput. Perhaps NASA has been following this and that's why they haven't called to offer to shoot me into space for tomorrow's game against Ohio State. Or maybe they're just too busy hunting for lost tools. Alas! I seem to have no control over tomorrow's outcome, so I will just have to hope as hard as my little...
There is a Taco Bell commercial running on TV now that makes me less desirous of eating Taco Bell with every consecutive viewing. Basically the message that I get from this commercial is "Eating Taco Bell makes you stupid." I wish I could find the commercial on YouTube to embed it - if anyone can find it, let me know! It involves three friends at some sort of ranch. One of the friends has climbed into a pen with a raging bull, and is calling for the other two to rescue him. Since neither of them wants to, they decide...
This is a story that I made up last night to prove to a friend that he was a terrible storyteller and that I could make up a story on the spot. I am sharing it with you so that I don't have to think of anything else to blog today. I only have so much creative energy, folks! Once upon a time, there was a happy little Tyrannosaurus Rex. T-Rex would traipse gleefully through the forest, stomping on everything in his path¹. One day, just as he was about to trample some protomammal and destroy the potential for all...
A couple of days ago, Jamelah posted about her haircare routine and said that one way she keeps her gorgeous communist hair in gorgeous communist shape is to only wash it 2-3 times a week. This is a haircare tip I've heard around a lot, but had never put into action. So I tried not washing my hair on Monday, and I just looked like someone who had rolled out of bed before coming to work. I realize that it takes a while for your scalp to catch on that it doesn't have to produce so much oil, but I...
Note: If you are reading this in England (or anywhere else where "pants" means "underpants" as opposed to "trousers") you should either substitute "trousers" for "pants" when reading this OR read "pants" as "pants" and laugh uproariously. A few months ago, my sedentary lifestyle and love for ice cream and french fries caused me to have to go pants-shopping, as all of the pants I had were straining at the waist. I bought several new pairs of pants and retired many others. Now, although I am no less fond of ice cream and french fries (and no less sedentary either)...
I received an email from my dad this morning: Subject: This is what you are getting for ChristmasMessage body: We saw an ad for this on TV and thought it was much more useful than a GPS When I clicked on the link, this is what I saw:...
I always thought that Fraulein Maria was on crack, but snowflakes that stay on my eyelashes are pretty cool. The first snow of the season has arrived in Srahtown, and it's a very calm, floaty type of snow that blows softly on a gentle breeze, but falls mostly downwards. It's more like movie-snow than the sideways biting snows we'll probably have later this season. My usual snow-behavior consists of shuffling around, facing the ground, with all of my body wrapped up in coats and scarves and only my eyes sticking out. Today, though, I turned my bare face up to...
I've just upgraded from Movable Type 3.3 to 4.21. It wasn't so bad, except that there was an Apache handling thingy¹ that's been set wrong on my server for months and which I've sort of just worked around, but I finally had to figure out today. And then there's the fact that my MT installation only seems to work properly when the www is included in the URL². If you notice anything that doesn't work, please let me know. I may be implementing some fun new stuff here soon! Update 11/17/08 7:04AM: Comments should be working now! And my stylesheet...
I went to a football game today, and had to wait in line to use the bathroom at halftime. Unfortunately, the bathrooms were in Port-a-Potty form, but fortunately there were many of them so the lines weren't too long and moved pretty quickly. There was a couple in front of me in line who I didn't pay much attention to until they went into the Port-a-Potty together. I thought, "Geez, that's weird. I mean, I've been in the situation before where a friend and I might go into a single-user bathroom together, so that we can move things along faster...
It's a good thing I went to China in September, or I would have nothing to blog about in November. Once upon a time, I came back to Shanghai from the excursion to Nanjing I'd attended with one of the programs I visited. I arrived back in Shanghai around 4pm, then had to catch a taxi to get back to my hotel during rush hour (I probably should have just taken the subway, but - to my great shame - I never learned the subway system in the whole time I was there) . I stood there with my suitcases,...
You may remember, from last year's NaBloPoMo, my training for and participation in a 5k walk on Thanksgiving. My parents, sister and I all participated in Ann Arbor's Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot 5k Walk/Run on Thanksgiving morning, and it was a nice way to spend some time together and do an activity that we all enjoy, as well as the first time that any of us had walked in a 5k race before. We started out at a leisurely pace, chatting with each other and with the bicyclist who marked the end of the race group, then continued at a...
I dreamt that high heels Were banned on the campus of Uni I Work At. I had forgotten Till I got dressed this morning; thought, "I must wear flats."...
I just got back from a conference in Lexington, Kentucky. If my culinary experience in Lexington is any indication¹, Kentucky is not known for fried chicken or bourbon or anything like that, but Indian food (which I ate twice in the 48 hours or so I was there) and pretzels (which I ate three times). Next year's conference is in Cincinnati, and I have volunteered my advice/help to our local arrangements committee, including the suggestion that our mid-afternoon snack break should involve a make-your-own Cincinnati chili bar and/or Graeter's ice cream. YOU'RE WELCOME, fellow conference attendees. (I am also going...
For almost a year now, I've been planning to dress up as the girl from the Cake song Short Skirt/Long Jacket for Halloween, but when Halloween finally came around, everyone I know was out of town, so there were no Halloween parties to go to. I'm a bit disappointed, but at least I knew that far enough in advance that the only aspect of the costume I'd bought was nail polish for my "fingernails that shine like justice." Next year for Halloween, I want to be either Freddie Mercury or Luna Lovegood. My sister has suggested that I combine the...
I am going to a conference for the next three days or so. I have no idea what effect this will have on NaBloPoMo, because I'm not sure if I'll have Internet access at the hotel. In any case, I will WRITE something, whether or not I can PUBLISH it!...
The song is in the picture, not in the title this time!...
Every once in a while, a topic comes up that I am surprised I've never blogged about, because I have some long-held and violently strong emotion one way or another. Micah and I were having a conversation that went like this: @srah: I just remembered that when Thanksgiving happens, I get pumpkin pie! Are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet? @jmblya: What's stopping you from buying a pie from the store now? Or making your own? You should never deny yourself pumpkin-based foods. @srah: No, pumpkin pie is more about anticipation...
Oh thank you, Collective, for giving me something to blog about. (Their answers: Heather! Anne!, Abigail!, Kat!, Jennie!)You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?Hmmm. I'm much more relaxed about her now that we're out of that danger, but if I have to blow someone up, Sarah Palin. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Who will it be?Kids today... the music all sounds like noise. Back in my day... hold on, let me adjust this ear trumpet...Where were we? Um, the...
I dreamt last night that I was going somewhere with President-Elect Obama¹ and a big entourage of people in an old jalopy. Something happened (it isn't clear now and I don't remember if it was in the dream) that resulted in Obama hitting his head and being knocked unconscious. He was lying on the floor of the back seat of the jalopy and everyone was trying to wake him up with smelling salts, shaking him, slapping his face, and nothing was working. I said, "Well, this works in the movies," and leaned in to kiss him and when I got...
It occurs to me that a) I have nothing to write for NaBloPoMo today and b) I have not yet finished writing up all the little notes that I took in China of things to blog about. Now keep in mind that I got back from China over a month ago, so I may be a little fuzzy on what my notes meant... shoes - Um, apparently I wanted to tell you something about shoes, but I have forgotten what. Chinese people wear 'em, if you're curious!"what watch?" - After several days of communicating in broken English, I got the...
If I had thought of this earlier (and if I were sure there wasn't anything potentially illegal about it), I would have liked to volunteer (or organize an army of volunteers) to be a line-proxy for the elderly and infirm (or heck, maybe just anyone!) in high-population areas, so that they could take breaks to go to the bathroom, or eat or sit down. It's been sad to read about people for whom even the early-voting lines were too long, especially since turnout was unexpectedly high (at least compared to past years) and so people weren't prepared enough to vote...
(This counts as a post, right? Especially now that i just wrote some text? How about if I throw in some free stuff you can get for voting?)...
This morning, when I was on my way to work, my car's clock (which is set 10 minutes ahead in order to try to trick me into getting places on time, except it doesn't work because I just mentally subtract 10 minutes automatically now) said 9:07, because I had not yet reset it after Daylight Saving Time ended this weekend. The sun was bright and shining, and when I got to work, there were no parking spaces left. I started to panic that I had, in changing my alarm clock, changed it in the wrong direction, but no, it turns...
I haven't subscribed to any magazines in several years, and I still feel like I've read more "fix your problem area" or "how to flatter your flawed figure" articles than I ever need to read. But you know what I would like to read more about? Why the heck do my shoes always wear out at the back of the heel before they wear out anywhere else? Is it because I'm wearing shoes that are too big, or too small, or shoes that don't flatter my foot-shape? Are my feet too wide or too narrow, or too wide in the...
Starting out NaNoWriMo with a meme! This bodes well for the rest of the month. *rolls eyes* Oh well, it's about time I got around to doing a meme I was tagged for several weeks ago! Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. If you don’t have 7 blog...
On this, the momentous seventh anniversary of this blog (such as it is) I would like to announce my candidacy for National Blog Posting Month. Our campaign slogan will be: "She doesn't seem to blog all the rest of the year, so maybe she'll have plenty of material saved up for November." The outcome is questionable. During last year's NaBloPoMo, there was a reference to a song from a musical in each post. This year, I'm expanding it to songs in general, which may be from musicals or may be from this thing I've just heard of, called the radio....
More notes from China: I am kicking myself for getting my hair cut before leaving for China because a) it's got some weird bits that don't look right and b) it's not long enough to put in a ponytail anymore. I am collecting a lot of sweat on the back of my neck. I am gross.I sat in on a class where we learned to sing the birthday song in Chinese. ♫ Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le... ♫That semester of Mandarin I took in college keeps coming back to me in little pieces. Unfortunately, it is all mixed up...
Fun facts, observations and gross generalizations that I have made/learned so far (mostly gleaned from reading Lonely Planet China or from sitting in on a class at one of the study abroad programs I visited today) In Chinese, every syllable ends in n, ng, r or a vowel.The Chinese sayings: "entice the tiger away from the mountain" and "a dragon on the beach can be teased by shrimp" both mean that things are weaker outside of their usual environment, like "a fish out of water".Lonely Planet China has a section titled "Visiting the Han, Solo" which I'm pretty sure they...
I listened to this song right before I went to bed last night and as I lay there trying to fall asleep, the song was in my head. Then I dreamt that I was unable to say the word Australia without prefacing it with "shiny, new". I would say that I probably talk about Australia at work more than the average person (except maybe someone who works in Australian government/diplomacy or something), so when I was advising students, I would say things like, "If you want to study in an English-speaking country, you might want to consider looking at...
Oh, by the way, I'm going to China tomorrow. I'm going to Shanghai for work for the next ten days. I probably would have blogged this earlier, except that I've been insanely busy with a) work, then b) having no power/internet at home, then c) running around like a chicken with my head cut off, preparing for this trip. And d) more work. But here we go, finally! I leave at 6am tomorrow. The flight is 18 hours long, and actually requires me to fly east (Atlanta) before flying west (Shanghai) in order to ultimately get to The East¹. I...
Micah did this meme eight million years ago over a month ago and I made a note to myself to do it too. Now I am finally getting around to it. This is a list of my favorite movies for every year I've been alive. Please note that favoritism is frequently based on entertainment value rather than quality, so I am not trying to say that The Fugitive is better than Schindler's List, but rather that I can (and do) watch The Fugitive, like, five or six times a year and I haven't seen Schindler's List again since I saw...
The Summer Olympics start today! I am always a fan of the underdog, so I won't be cheering for well-financed, popular and successful athletes like Michael "Bronzy" Phelps, who don't need my support. Instead, I will be supporting the Iraqi and Afghan female track and field runners Dina Abdul-Razak and Mehboba Ahdyar. I bet no one on the American Olympic team is receiving death threats or has to make their own uniforms!...
Noor and I had a competition at Walker Tracker for the month of July, and I lost. I lost badly. Noor is almighty, and much more disciplined than I am. Being more disciplined than me is not saying much, though. For the record, Noor not only beat me, but actually did quite well. Go Noor!...
I thought it was about time to post about this again... Have you ever wondered how to get your own handy-dandy user icon for the srah blah blah comments? You, too, could replace the default grey speech-bubble icon with your very own Gravatar by signing up here. What's more, the Gravatar you choose will show up on other Gravatar-enabled sites (including some Haloscan comments) when you enter your Gravatar-registered email address. Even comments you've already left with that address will have your Gravatar icon connected once you register!...
I am participating in NPW's Choose Your Own Blogventure. My section of the story is below the jump, but if you'd like to begin at the beginning of the story and choose your own blogventure, you can start here....
How not to drink tea: Wash teacup and spoon, which are still dirty from the last cup of tea that you drank, and probably rife with all kinds of bacteria.Fill electric kettle and set it to boil.When kettle boils, pour the water over the teabag.Allow to steep for a few minutes.Add milk, which goes delightfully well with this tea.Let tea cool on your desk.Go to meeting, forgetting about tea.Leave meeting to advise drop-in student.Return to desk; tea is now cold.Become ensaddened by cold tea.Microwave cold tea. This is never ideal, especially when the milk is already in there, but GOSHDARNIT,...
I read this post a few weeks ago about tea samples and was intrigued. Never mind that I already have so much tea that my cabinet door doesn't quite close properly. Never mind that I still own teas I haven't tasted. Never mind that I still haven't found a really efficient way to dispose of loose tea once I've brewed it (I always end up with either leaves and tea dripping all over my trash bag or a sink drain full of leaves). Never mind any of this. More tea must be obtained! I shopped around at all the sites...
The advantage of having an overactive imagination is that I am well-prepared for almost any eventuality, no matter how preposterous. I will have you know that I have many courses of action plotted out just in case I accidentally kick my shoe off while walking and as it flies through the air, it happens to fall into a storm drain. And if my shoe gets stuck in the train tracks just as I hear the train start to whistle and the railroad arms start to come down, I will give one more tug, then give up and leave the shoe...
Je suis la pire fondatrice de la Semaine des Langues! Pourquoi ai-je mis le dernier jour de la Semaine des Langues au quatre juillet, jour de l'Independence des États-Unis? J'ai été très occupé ce week-end, et je n'ai pas passé beaucoup de temps devant l'ordinateur. Alors aujourd'hui, de retour à Srahtown, j'ai enfin rien d'autre à faire et je peux écrire l'article final de la Semaine. Je vous remercie, tous les participants, et j'éspère que vous y participerez l'année prochaine aussi! Les participants: 5 ballerinas named moeAll The WineThe Curly QElisabeth WritesGoing to Uni (Again)...heather in europeHeliosphericthe holly and the...
My grandmother grew up in Germany. In college, my mother studied abroad in Central Europe one summer and visited Germany and Austria. I took four and a half weeks of German in middle school. Last year my parents had a delightful German exchange student living with them. Although I never really studied it, German was always sprinkled into language around the house. And yet ich kann nicht sprechen Deutsch.. I have picked up phrases and words here and there - not enough to actually communicate in the language, not enough to use without embarrassment in front of actual German-speaking people,...
صديقتي ستيفاني هي في الأردن هذا الصيف. هي تدرس اللغة العربية في الجامعة الاردني. انا لن دراسة اللغة العربية في العام المقبل ، ولكن اريد ان اذهب الى الأردن الصي المقبل. Wednesday's posts (I don't know how to say that in Arabic):A Paris (اللغة الفرنسية)Language Week 2008 (اللغة البرتغاليه)Manchmal liegen die Dinge lustiger auf Deutsch ( اللغة الالماني) <-- Pretty much my favorite Language Week post evarLanguage week Wednesday - Spanish (اللغة الاسباني)Más Español (اللغة الاسباني) Tell me if you wrote a post for Language Week today! [click below for translation]...
J'ai commencé un article en arabe aujourd'hui, mais l'arabe me fait mal à la tête et je suis trop fatiguée pour y continuer. Demain l'arabe, alors! Comme je suis fatiguée, je ne vais même pas vous dire quelque chose d'originale - je vous lis deux extraits du Petit Prince. Et en plus ce sont des extraits que j'ai déjà écrit sur ce blog. La paresse! Les articles de mardi:Canucks unite (anglais/français canadien)whubistuble whubile yubou wubork (ubbidubbi)Merde. (français) Segunda dia de Semana de Lenguages (espagnol)Beichten von einer Ausländerin (allemand)Language week Tuesday - German (allemand)body language (espagnol)01/Jul/2 008: Ein Bisschen Islay Auf...
(Ich wünschte, ich könnte schreiben diesem Post in den Sprachen Deutsch, aber ich kann nicht sprechen diese Sprache überhaupt, so bin ich mit Google Translate Ihnen sagen, dass ich werde schreiben, die Post in spanischer Sprache statt.) En los programas de televisión y las peliculas, los estudiantes que estudien en el extranjero no son serios. Por ejemplo, Shannon en el programa "Lost" dice que pasó un año en Paris, pero no habla francés por que ella se emborracharon y no estudio. Lamentablemente, esta es una opinión típico de los estudios en el extranjero y tengo que luchar contra esta creencia...
As you may or may not know, srah blah blah is the annual host of Language Week, a meme that would be a heckuva lot more effective if I could pin it down to the same week every year, or even if I celebrated it during National Foreign Language Week instead of the middle of the summer. This year, my sister has requested that I not hold Language Week over her birthday, because she's tired of her birthday songs being written in French or something. So this year's Language Week will be held June 30-July 4, 2008. What better way...
Happy (belated) first anniversary to 20 Something Bloggers... 1700 members and counting! Visit Twenty Something Bloggers...
When uninspired, lists and bullet points always come in handy. As does a nice old-fashioned rant about What Is Wrong With The World. I was walking down the street earlier this week when I heard a prospective freshman, visiting campus for orientation, on the phone with his parents. I know all this about him despite the fact that he was on the opposite side because he was shouting into his phone the whole time we were walking up the street. "YOU NEED TO COME GET MY SHIT," he shouted, "YOU SHOULD HAVE FIGURED THIS OUT LAST NIGHT. COME AND GET...
A meme! I have seen Craig and Schmutzie¹ do slightly different versions of this meme (that's a fascinating thing about memes - how they can mutate slightly as they spread around the blogosphere), and I've adopted Schmutzie's list of questions. It's fascinating to try to guess the answers to the questions that people gave that led to the pictures they selected. I will answer any questions you have, but I think it's fun to speculate and guess first! The concept: 1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. 2. Using only the first page of...
In news tangentially related to the Butler Gas Station Did It'">previous post, I went to the doctor the other week for my allergies (she actually believed I was sick this time!) and they weighed me. My weight tends to fluctuate within about a 10-pound range, but it had fluctuated out of that range to the point where I was eligible to give blood. Oops! I didn't think too much of it until I started realizing that my pants were a little tight this week, and that I also hadn't recorded my steps on Walker Tracker in a month or more,...
Earlier this week, the prices for a gallon of gas and a gallon¹ of cigarettes were the same at my local gas station. Now, at the end of the week, gas is a few cents more expensive. I feel like the gas station is trying to subliminally encourage me to give up driving and take up smoking instead. THANKS A LOT FOR TRYING TO MURDER ME, GAS STATION. I wish they advertised other things on the same sign, like: Regular Unleaded: $3.99Marlboros: $3.85Walking: Free, you lazy cow, and better for you that the other two options. ¹ Or whatever unit...
Three days ago, I sent a personalized form message through my professional association's website to my state senators asking them to support the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, which, to boil it down, would establish a foundation with the goal of increasing participation in (and funding for) study abroad and increasing diversity both in study abroad destinations and in the demographics of study abroad participants. This bill has been working its way through the system for a while and will expire if it is not passed by the Senate this year. This morning, I received a reply from...
One of my guilty pleasures when I fly is reading the SkyMall catalogue. It's not because there's any actual shopping that I want to do, but more because I'm amazed by the range of things that other people are - apparently - willing to buy. I've always considered the target audience for SkyMall to be "OCD hypochondriacs who are really obsessed with their pets, have more money than they know what to do with and whose children hate them." That said, I really want a Slanket. Frangela say(s) they rock! And they are even more desirable after this recent conversation...
This meme is going around again, and Elisabeth has tagged me. I've done it before, but - heck - I'll do it again. Post the rules on your blog:- Write six random things about yourself in a blog post- Tag six people in your post- Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog- Let the tagger know your entry is up I don't like most frosting, and therefore I don't like most cake. I will usually have a small piece of your birthday or wedding cake in order to be polite (and to test...
I realize that I have already spammed you about this in pretty much every outlet known to man me (Twitter, Facebook, This is Awesome!, Digg, shouting at random strangers on the street), but there may yet be audiences and individuals I have not yet reached, and who desperately need to watch Le Strat: His Rock Is So Hard ("The story of the vampire that sucks blood and totally wails on guitar, and also saves rock and roll."). Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebf8hZgic7I If you're not sold yet, let me inform you that the movie includes cameo appearances starring-ish roles by such...
Every few months I like to remind Universal Pictures (passive-aggressively, in blogged song-parody format) of how annoyed I am that they haven't released The Pirates of Penzance on DVD. That'll show them! I can hear them caring right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IUZSj7vBcw srahAccording to the holy textOf the FSM and all his sect,The reason Earth's too hot these daysIs a population kept at bayAs pirate numbers do decreaseIn Kathmandu, Peru and GreeceHis nood'ly appendage to us will bringThis terrible scourge: global warming.He brought global warming!And it is, it is a terrible thingTo have global warming!He brought global warmingUniversal PicturesHe did!He brought global...
I am really excited about this Economic Stimulus Garbage that's going on, because I am such a miserly hoarder of my money that it gives me pleasure to be given money with the intent that it should be spent freely on frivolous, economically-stimulating spending. When I get my tax refunds every year, I think, "Wheeee! Free money! What shall I blow it on?" and then I end up putting it into savings "for a rainy day", which I never spend, no matter how rainy the day is, because my imagination always assumes that things will get worse and there will...
There is a commercial that they read on NPR every once in a while for some kind of agency or bureau to encourage people to bring their businesses to Florida. I'm not sure if it only goes out on my local NPR station or if it's part of the nationwide broadcast that all of you hear¹. Today, after hearing it a million times, I finally wrote it down. If I transcribed it correctly (which I believe I did, thank you very much), it ends, "... helping businesses locate, expand and set up in Florida." What is the state of the...
Tuesday, March 25 - Wednesday, March 26 When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I checked my flight status and discovered that my flight from San Francisco to Chicago was delayed something ridiculous like 4.5 hours. So I called United and asked them to change this in some way, even if it involved putting me on a different airline. "Okie doke," the operator replied (although perhaps not in those words), and she booked me on a US Airways flight leaving slightly earlier that would take me through Charlotte instead. However, she told me, I would have to stop by the...
Oh yeah, I'm not done with this, am I? Monday, March 24 On Monday, Cari took the day off work and we went to Chinatown. We went on a tour where the group was made up of us, a mother-daughter pair, and a half a billion German high school students and teachers. So there was this weird Chinese-American-German amalgamation as the Germans translated things for each other. The tour took us around Chinatown and taught us a bit about the history of Chinatown and the people there, especially focusing on our guide's own family and experiences growing up in Chinatown....
Sunday, March 23 Looking back at the pictures, I can believe we packed so much stuff into one day! It seems like this had to have been spread over several days! Cari and I got up bright and early Sunday morning to go to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. We thought we were going to be the only people out being touristy on Easter Sunday but there turned out to be a sizable tour group. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip, I think, just because it was something I knew nothing about before going...
Saturday, March 22 On Saturday, Cari, Matt and I went to Berkeley to go on a tour/tasting at the Scharffen Berger factory. Unlike the last time I went to a chocolate tasting, I was actually able to appreciate the quality chocolate and the different flavors therein. The key is not to use your teeth at all. You break the chocolate into little pieces, then let each individual morsel melt in your mouth, releasing all the fruity undertones that come from the fermentation process applied to the cocoa beans. IT WAS AWESOME. I tasted all kinds of flavors that I don't...
I am participating in NPW's Choose Your Own Blogventure. My section of the story is below the jump, but if you'd like to begin at the beginning of the story and choose your own blogventure, you can start here any time after 10am EST....
Friday, March 21 Cari and I got up bright and early on Friday morning. Actually, only I got up bright and early, because - even though I was exhausted from my travel - I was still pretty much on Eastern time. That gave me some time to get myself organized before Cari and I left for our morning drive to Año Nuevo State Natural Reserve, where we went on a tour and learned about the elephant seals that come there every year to lay their eggs have their babies. Then the mothers go back out to sea to feed, and...
I had a whole lot of stuff to write about my wonderful trip to San Francisco (a bajillion years ago) and the not-so-wonderful travel in order to get there, but there's just too much to say and not enough time to write it all. I will try to do it bit by bit rather than writing it all in one go, and return to the land of the blogging. Jday, you win! Thursday, March 20 I set off for the airport several hours early, with the idea that as long as I was going for a long drive to the...
I'm back from San Francisco and my blog is all empty. Here, look at these until I get around to blogging again. My pictures: Cari's pictures: (If you are a Flickr friend of one or both of us, you might want to look at the sets on Flickr instead so you can see the friends-only pictures with people in them!)...
Well, hello everyone. This is the famous srah here, gear fab. I have been warned that I am blogging before an audience of untold dozens and am suitably terrified. All day I’ve been racking my brains to come up with something clever to say, and I’m afraid I’m never going to produce anything of the quality I’d hoped. So I’m just going to babble away and make a greaaaaaat first impression on you all. Congratulations! Here goes! I would like someday to be an aunt or an honorary aunt or something, so that I will have someone to buy lots...
("Those are the stupidest fist names I've ever heard.") Danny boy, don't be afraid, to shake that ass, and misbehave Danny boy, I know you got time, but what are you waiting for, Anyway the dust may just blow away, if you wait for a windy day But you may find the chance has passed you by; - "Sewn" by The Feeling, who are probably slightly more Irish than the author of "Danny Boy" because at least they've been to Ireland before There is a yearly tradition associated with Srahtown and The University I Work At, wherein local bars start...
I am almost finished listening to the audiobook of The Amber Spyglass, the third book of the His Dark Materials series¹. I started thinking about animal form my dæmon would have if I lived in Lyra's world. The Intarnets tell me that it would be this: #58;//go ldencompassmovie.com/goldenCompass_blog.swf?id=1128656"> Apparently I have twelve days before my dæmon settles, and if you don't think this form accurately represents me, you all have some influence in changing it by clicking above (if you can't see the button to go to the next question, it's that brown area in the bottom right corner). I'm...
It's been over a week since The Collective invited readers to be interviewed. I asked for questions then forgot about it for a while, but here - at last - are my answers to their questions. From Jennie!: 1) Why does Ohio insist on throwing more snow at us? Why? From heather! anne!: 2) What is the all-time best Christmas movie? The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It makes me tear up every time I see Imogene taking her earrings out to look more like Mary, or hear that Leroy left the ham behind for the Baby Jesus. "It's a present....
I recently ordered this shirt from Teh Internets, because pirates are such total wimps compared to lady cops and waitresses. Unfortunately when the shirt arrived, it was poorly printed - there was this sort of phantom¹ shadow of the Comics Curmudgeon URL underneath where the URL is supposed to be, as though the press had slipped or something. I don't know. I'm not a t-shirt maker so I don't know the specifics of why it happened - I just know that it didn't look right. Today, after a couple of weeks of saying, "I'll get around to that later" I...
O HAI I LIKE LISTS First off, let me clarify that I am an ABC Bakeries girl and always have been. So don't talk to me of your Trefoils and Tagalongs, O Little Brownie Bakers customers! I have studied your ways, but they are strange and foreign to me. A List of My Favorite Girl Scout Cookies... in order... of preference Cinna-spins are exempt because I haven't tried them and because they're this year's New Cookie That Will Not Be Back Next Year. Remember the time they tried to fill that spot with some cheese crackers? Yeah, I remember...
Tier 1: Delicious Easter candy Butterfinger creme eggsDove milk chocolate in any shape or formReese's peanut butter eggs Tier 2: Things that can only be eaten once a year marshmallow PeepsStarburst jelly beansdiscolored hard-boiled eggs Tier 3: DO NOT WANT traditional jelly beansmalted milk eggsCadbury creme eggsReese's Piecesanything that combines chocolate with orange flavoringregular year-round candy packaged in pastel wrappings, where they don't even make an effort to put it in the shape of a bunny or a chick or an egg or something...
James had a series of questions that he posed to bloggers, asking us each to send him one "Golden Blogging Tip." Turns out I had way more than one. It would appear that I have a lot of opinions on things and like to express those opinions on the Internet. Who knew?! So I'm reproducing my full response to the request here, because - hey, free content for the lazy one! Feel free to share your own thoughts on blogging, here or in your own blog. When/where do you write the best posts? I don't think there's a formula. If...
Apparently we are describing our weekends in two-word increments. I don't know why we are doing this, but it is The Internet so I must stop questioning and instead follow blindly. So let it be written, so let it be done! Friday: Dad's birthday drove north excessive snowfall slippery conditions didn't die gymnastics meet hot dog steak dinner Saturday: viewed exhibit leftover steak Battlestar Galactica pickle soup fell asleep Sunday: mix CD Red Lobster drove home changed clocks Auberge Espagnole...
Since today is Leap Day, I'd say it's about time for another one of these. srah Universal! Universal Pictures Who calls? srah Your favorite blogger! srah blah blah And I, her little blog! Universal Pictures Oh, mad intruders, How dare ye face me? Know ye not, oh rash ones, That I have doomed you to a life of boredom? srah Have mercy on us! Hear us, ere you bore us! Universal Pictures I do not think I ought to listen to you. Yet, you are the greatest blog and blogger ever, And so I will be merciful – say on!...
You have about 24 hours left to locate and watch the movie Once before it is no longer "the movie Once" and is instead "the Academy Award-winning film Once." You have been warned! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mIpwx5lA5I It's such a sweet, lovely movie and I would love for everyone to see it. It manages to be romantic without being Romantic - that is, it's a wonderful story about the relationship between two people, but it's also very realistic. It felt very real - possibly influenced by the fact that the leading actor and actress fell in love during the making of the movie....
Let me tell you sonny... let me tell you straight You kids today ain't never had it tough Always had everything handed to you on a silver plate You lazy brats think nothing's good enough Well, nobody ever drove me to school when it was ninety degrees below We had to walk buck naked through forty miles of snow Worked in the coal mines twenty-two hours a day for just half a cent Had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent - Weird Al Yankovic, "When I Was Your Age" Have I ever mentioned that I am...
(The most annoying thing about blogging is that the posts do not write themselves. I have been making notes all week and am only now catching up on actually writing out the damned things.) My favorite office on campus, the Office of Employee Health and Well-Being, has come through again with yet another exciting activity. Starting last Monday, I am now a member of Team [University I Work At], a training program for a 5k run/walk race in April. I originally thought that I would just sign up for the race and not waste $20 on the training sessions, but...
Mansfield Park is possibly my least favorite Jane Austen novel. I'm actually not sure exactly how I would rank all of her novels - it would be something like: Persuasion/Pride & Prejudice (tie)Northanger Abbey/Sense & Sensibility (tie)Emma/Mansfield Park (tie) I have a general idea of how much I liked them, but I've also never sat down and read each one in succession and my memories of the books are very much influenced by the movie versions. Mansfield Park, I think, suffers the worst from this, because I've never been satisfied by a movie version. Although I'm not that fond of...
It's a good thing that I went to Kroger in my pyjamas that one time, because otherwise I think this would have turned entirely into a pop culture and movie-reviewing blog. Don't expect that to end anytime soon. My movie-viewings are usually more exciting than my real life. And so, with no further ado, I bring you... Juno! I am really glad to be able to say that I've seen Juno. It makes me feel like that much more of a legitimate moviegoer, since my Oscar-nominee-viewing was - pre-Juno - at three, and none of those had been nominated for...
It's about time I finally got around to watching Northanger Abbey, since Mansfield Park is on tomorrow! I shall shamelessly copy and edit - only slightly - my own Facebook/Flixster review of the film rather than writing anything original. Alas, poor readers! It was good, but leaves room for improvement in future film versions. When I read the book, I felt that the judgment of Catherine was coming from inside - from the narrator and the reader, so that we were sort of laughing at her from our side. In the movie, it's all Henry and I felt a bit...
Time for something happy around here! Therefore I present to you this lovely lolpanda picture (the only useful thing about pandas). And also, a meme! Thanks to inspiration from Elisabeth, I have finally gotten around to finishing my list of: 50 Things That Make Me Happy The Pont du Gardfrothed milkfonduedangling earlobesvisiting my familypetting kitties, then leaving them with their owners when I'm doneplaying with children, then leaving them with their owners when I'm donemaking fortsbakingold people in lovedressing up in costumes or strange outfitsAnn ArborThe Treachery of ImagesMikahuggy-hugsMr Rogersmaraschino cherriessushi, especially if someone else is payingVince Noirthe Amaretto Biscotti...
I have been quite upset by Heath Ledger's death. I'm rather surprised at how much it seems to have affected me. So - because I seem unable to write anything this week that isn't in list-format, either at work or in my personal life - here is a list of the reasons why I am upset about Heath Ledger's death, in descending order of importance. It was a surprise. I don't think anyone saw this coming. Lindsay Lohan? Britney? Pete Doherty¹? Yes, I could see that. But Heath Ledger? Where did that come from? The first I heard about it...
I guess I should finally finish writing this post, before it's Sunday again and time for more Jane Austenpalooza (I've never seen a film adaptation of Northanger Abbey so I'm looking forward to that one, but I think I'm going to have to tape it). Things I liked about Persuasion (2007) It was produced by Clerkenwell Films. Rupert Penry-Jones is ridiculously handsome and smoldering. I felt like Mary Elliot Musgrove was a more complex character in this adaptation than in Persuasion 1995. In 1995, her hypochondriac tendencies seemed more like annoying attention-seeking personal traits, whereas in this version it was...
Fox was apparently surprised and dismayed to find that the viewership numbers for American Idol are down this year. Fox had assumed that the writers' strike would mean that more people would turn to reality television, but from everything I've seen and heard anecdotally, it sounds like more people are turning to Netflix and to Doing Other Stuff. I have turned to the Internet, to my local library's DVD/video collections and to Not Procrastinating. It might help if Fox's advertising approach were something other than "It's the only thing on!" I watched part of Tuesday's episode and decided that was...
Apparently it's been De-Lurking Week¹ all week and it took me until Friday to catch on and finally blog about it. So happy De-Lurking Day! Please feel free to comment here, lurkers and non-lurkers alike. Welcome, and thank you for reading. Tell us the tale of how you found your way here! Tell us your favorite Disney movie! Tell us your favorite verb! Tell us your favorite herb! Tell us that you're okay, that you're okay, Annie! Tell us what you want, what you really really want! Have you got a New Age girl? Tell us what she's like! Mr...
Last week I watched Who Am I This Time?, a made-for-TV movie starring Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon. This movie is perfect for anyone who ever saw Christopher Walken playing a homicidal lunatic in any of his millions of homicidal lunatic roles and thought, "You know what? I need to see this guy playing a romantic lead." In this movie, instead of playing a serial killer, Christopher Walken plays an extremely shy hardware store clerk-slash-thespian who Susan Sarandon manages to seduce through the THEATAH! And who is probably a serial killer. It was actually pretty terrifying. I kept thinking, "Give...
I rediscovered this morning a list that I made a little over a year ago for my own use. It occurred to me, upon rereading it, that others might be interested. It is equally likely, however, that you will all just laugh at me. So, at risk of great personal embarrassment, I bring you: The List of Gilbert Blythe Appearances in the First Two Anne of Green Gables Movies (Because the Third One Is an Abomination) Complete With DVD Chapter Number and Approximate Time of Appearance (This is particularly useful in Anne of Avonlea (aka Anne of Green Gables -...
I have always dreamed of being rich and famous. "Someday when I'm rich and famous," I tell people, "I will have someone to drive me around all day and I'll never have to drive anywhere again." "Someday when I'm rich and famous," I dream, "I will own fancy shoes that cost more than fifty dollars and make The Manolo proud!" "Someday when I'm rich and famous," I say, "I will have my own reserved parking spot." "Someday when I'm rich and famous," I muse, "I will buy all of the hats in China¹ and never be sad for a lost...
I wanted an egg salad sandwich, so while out running errands on my lunch hour, I swung by The Place Uptown That Sells Egg Salad Sandwiches. Unfortunately there was no parking available anywhere near TPUTSESS so after driving around the block three times, I gave up and bought an egg salad sandwich from the student center cafeteria. It was half as expensive, but not half as good as the egg salad sandwich from TPUTSESS (and I would have gotten a pickle from TPUTSESS!). If the economy of Srahtown comes to a crashing halt because I'm not supporting it with expensive-but-delicious...
The most exciting thing that happened to me over break was when I lost my hat. It was a red hat. It was windy when I lost my hat. My hat flew right off my head! I could not chase my hat because my hat was blown away. My hat plus the wind equals faster than me. I hope a homeless person finds my hat and my hat keeps the homeless person's head warm. It is a good hat. I miss my hat. The End....
So much for my Writers' Strike plans. Instead of the Quantumleapapalooza I predicted, all of my television needs have been fulfilled by outsourcing. Corner GasThis Canadian series is running on Superstation WGN at bizarre hours like 11:30pm on Sunday night and 8pm on Wednesday. This is why I have only seen two episodes of Pushing Daisies, folks. It is not that I dislike Pushing Daisies, but something about Pushing Daisies makes my heart ache a little bit, and Corner Gas just makes me laugh. Be gone with you, angst! Instead we shall drive around in little cars. Never Mind the...
'Tis the season for lists, 'tisn't it? Last year I listed my favorite Christmas songs so this year I'll do my favorite Christmas movies. Maybe next year - if I remember - it will be books. srah's Ultimate List of the Best Christmas Movies and/or Movies That Take Place at Christmas Home Alone - I actually haven't seen this in years, but it makes the list out of some sort of loyalty to my Not-So-Secret Twin.Christmas in Connecticut - I love Barbara Stanwyck and I love Cuddles Szakall. Never mind that I can't remember exactly what happens in the movie....
I dreamt that I lived in this neighborhood in Ann Arbor that doesn't really exist but has shown up in my dreams before in the past. I think it's based on Pittsfield Village, mixed with the neighborhood in Ypsilanti where my friend Shannon used to live. Anyway, my family was looking out the window when a ball of fire came out of the sky and set fire to a patch of our neighbors' lawn. People kept coming over and trying to stomp it out, then they'd catch fire themselves, then spread it to other parts of the lawn. We kept...
I recently read this New York Times article about name-changing after marriage (I especially liked the anecdote¹ about the couple who played a softball game - his family vs her family - for naming rights to the family). I read the readers' comments afterwards and now I mostly just want to exterminate all human life on earth. It drove me up the wall that so many people were advocating for people to hypenate their names. Actually, it annoyed me an equal amount when people complained about hypenating names. I have never hypenated anything in my life. This is because (no...
I am fascinated by the idea that the words for beautiful (جميل, jameel) and sentence (جملة, jumla) come from the same root in Arabic. Beautiful sentence! This is especially confusing to me because when I hear جملة I keep translating it into French in my head, and I wonder why the topic of jumelles (twins and/or binoculars) keeps coming up in class. Alas, my progress this semester has not been up to the standards of previous semesters. I think that part of this is due to the content: It's a lot easier to make progress when you're starting from nothing....
We went tonight to see the second annual Jeff Daniels and Friends concert at the Michigan Theater, which was basically a huge love song to the state of Michigan. The artists were all from Michigan or had some Michigan connection, and were singing or pattering in between songs about their love for Michigan. We were a couple of rows back from the governor. I didn't realize that Jeff Daniels was so into musical performance, in addition to his acting and playwrighting. I'm always rather proud of him, because he's managed to stay true to his Michigan roots and his love...
Every year, my mom, my sister and I go to see a movie on the Friday after Thanksgiving. When we first started this tradition, the theaters were almost deserted, but I think more and more people are taking advantage of the opportunity to get away from the Black Friday shopping insanity. This year, our movie was Enchanted, where an animated Disney Princess accidentally finds herself in live-action form in New York City and has to deal with the problems of the non-fairy-tale world. Disney is a pretty safe Thanksgiving Friday choice for us, but after seeing Shrek 3 this morning,...
My family walked in our first 5k walk today. If anyone had asked us - which they didn't - we were prepared to call ourselves ¡Team Holt!, which had the dual advantages of sounding like ¡Steve Holt! when we shouted and raised our arms in the air in celebration, and also might have led people to believe our name was Holt, lending us an air of anonymity that would have helped when they were shutting down the race route before we were finished. ¡Team Holt!...
Hail! to the victors valiant Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes Hail! Hail! to Michigan the leaders and best Hail! to the victors valiant Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes Hail! Hail! to Michigan, the champions of the West! GO BLUE! powered by ODEO...
My most recent listen-in-the-car endeavor is The Lovely Bones, which is an interesting story but very strangely told. I'm not sure now if I would have liked it better if I'd read the text version rather than listening to the audio book, but I suspect that's the case. I have a feeling that the flowery and metaphorical language that bothered me might have been less noticeable if I had read it rather than having it read to me. For example: She asked for coffee and toast in a restaurant and buttered it with tears. - "Snapshots" What? Did she butter...
Warning #1: If for some reason you haven't seen The Sixth Sense yet and have managed to get through the last eight years without having the ending spoiled for you¹, you might want to stop reading now. Warning #2: The following post makes me sound like a crazy person. I kind of am. I've known more than one person (it's not just you, Jennie) who saw The Truman Show and became convinced that their entire life was a reality show created for others' entertainment. For me, it was not so much The Truman Show but The Sixth Sense that had...
Best. Quiz. Ever. Srsly. Your Score: Michelangelo / Rose Your ki is made up of 35% Vigor and 41% Wisdom You're not the Golden Girl who is most inclined to action, but take heart! At least you're not part of the brainiac patrol, either. You are the party animal of the Golden Girls / Ninja Turtle team. Carefree and often lazy, you're the one who will invariably be chosen for the most dangerous duty whenever a zany scheme calls for it. You crack jokes yourself and are the butt of many more, but your actions show that you are capable...
I have been tagged, so I bring you: 7 Random And/Or Weird Facts About srah When I was in elementary school, our music teacher, Mr McDonald (who had an imaginary friend named "Boo-Boo McGillicuddy") was the one who introduced me to Oliver! (and therefore to my first fictional-character crush) and I have the impression that he had us sing an awful lot of Three Dog Night. I don't know if it was part of the district-mandated curriculum for elementary-level music classes, if it was in our music book, or if Mr McDonald was just a huge fan of Three Dog...
I went to the Diwali festival tonight to see the festivities and eat the food. The dinner, which was heavily subsidized by Associated Student Government funding, only cost $2 to ticket-buyers. So while not free Indian food, it was pretty darn near to free Indian food. I was almost moved to tears¹ by the Classical Fusion dance done by the Rec Center class. I have been taking the half-hour per week classes offered by Employee Health and Well-Being², and these ladies (a different class, but with the same teacher) meet for an hour a week to learn and practice their...
[Note to those of you who have suggested themes/lyrics: I am going to try to use your suggestions, especially when my everyday life doesn't inspire me. Just because I haven't used them yet doesn't mean I won't. Keep suggesting!] The yearly question once again raises its head: to flu shot, or not to flu shot? I've gotten by without flu shots for my whole life so far and don't usually get hit very hard in flu season (just enough to take a sick day off work and some time to take care of myself), but on the other hand, I...
Since all of my NaBloPoMo post titles will be lyrics from musicals this year, I have decided that I will also have a little contest to encourage commenter loyalty and return visits and ROI and consumer cromulence and other boring business terms that I am pretty much just making up now. So on each NaBloPoMo post (identified with the Official NaBloPoMo Lolcat), you are invited to guess the musical that the title comes from. The person who guesses correctly (first) wins! Yay for you! Then at the end of the month, whoever has won the most days out of the...
As you may know, if you are stalking me and/or following me on Twitter¹, I went to Indianapolis for a conference last weekend. At the conference, I went to a session about why more females than males study abroad, and how this can influence study abroad marketing efforts. This session has been bothering me ever since, because the presenter had interviewed female study abroad students and had discovered that one reason a lot of females (at her university, anyway²) study abroad is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do so. This is one thing that we try to point...
I had a dream last night where I befriended a very insecure miniature horse. It was hard to win the horse over, but eventually it came to love me. Then someone brought their baby bunnies over to where we were, and just sort of dumped a box of them onto the ground so that the soft, velvety baby bunnies tumbled all over each other. My miniature horse friend took a liking to the baby bunnies and was petting them (I don't know how you pet something when you have hooves, but it made perfect sense in the dream). The bunnies...
I'm currently listening to the audiobook version of Northanger Abbey. It got me up to Michigan and back this weekend, and I still have a tape or two to finish off on my short jaunts around town. I had the clever idea that I was going to blog about how I could identify with both the heroine, Catherine Morland, and the hero, Henry Tilney, but then I discovered that I wrote exactly that almost exactly five years ago when I read the book for the first time. There is nothing new under the sun! I am fortunate, I suppose, to...
I am apparently senile. This morning I walked out the door to go to work, looked out at the parking lot and discovered my car was not there. I momentarily freaked out. I had just been talking to my Arabic professor this week about how what little crime there is in Srahtown usually consists of crimes of opportunity, and how I've managed to avoid anything so far by a) not getting drunk, b) not being out on the streets at 3am, when all of these incidents seem to occur and c) locking my doors. Now here I was, being so...
I went to Chicago last weekend! I am very slow at writing these travel-weekend writeups, and even moreso when I spend the week trying to catch up on sleep. Fortunately, the weekend is almost here, so I can clean, claim I'm going to clean and then not clean, and - most importantly - sleep. I drove up to Chicago for Lewis's birthday celebrations Saturday afternoon/evening. It takes about 5 hours to get to Chicago, although it took me a little longer because - no matter how good my directions are - I always second-guess them and get lost when I...
Some things that srah likes: things that are Indianthings that are cheap and/or free It has been a good week to be srah! The University I Work At's Office of Employee Health and Well-Being has come through again! Although their toning classes conflict with my Arabic schedule, they're now offering Indian Classical Dance classes on Thursdays from 12:10 to 12:40. I have been to one session and - as I'm sure you can guess - I am ready to go on stage and perform professionally any day now. In reality, I don't think half an hour a week is going...
follow srah at http://twitter.comI signed up for Twitter almost a year ago. I was going to admit to you that it was because I have some sort of addiction to everything social networking/web 2.0-related, but instead I think I will claim that it's because I am trying to establish my online identity by becoming the DOMINANT SRAH OF THE INTERNET. If I early-adopt everything on the Internet, I am more likely to get the username "srah" before anyone else takes it. There. Now ignore what I said about addiction. What addiction? Anyway, everyone was hopping on the Twitter bandwagon and...
My, there's been a flurry of blogging around here today! My blogging process is, like the Internet, a series of tubes. When one post that I perceive as particularly serious or long (like the one about Madeleine L'Engle) is in the works, it clogs everything else up. I don't want to blog anything else before I got that done, so a lot of things just hang around in the idea-stage until I finish. Anyway, here's a little meme I got from pesky'apostrophe and then it's off to bed with me!¹ Here are the [adapted] rules for the meme: Put your...
This is a really exciting time to be a Michigan fan. My director is a Notre Dame graduate, so this afternoon when talk turned to weekend plans, our conversation was basically My Team Is Going to Lose to Your Team. Both teams are 0-2 for the season so far, and going up against each other this weekend in what has been referred to as "Cripple Fight 2007" or "The Slump Buster Bowl". I think we have the advantage for MTIGTLTYT, though, with a freshman quarterback with half a game's experience (as opposed to a freshman quarterback with two games' experience),...
For once, this is a message that I just sent, rather than an open letter on my blog going out into the void. Dear CNN Money, Your article "Where the singles are" might have been more interesting and effective if it had taken into account the ages of the singles in the towns listed. For example, I'm sure that [Srahtown] is a great place to be an 18-21 year old single (about 66% of the population of the town is 18-24) but as a 27 year old in that town, it isn't quite as glamorous. I noticed that most of...
Last night as I returned home from the annual Latin American & Caribbean festival, I noticed that there was a huge black spider building a web across the window in the corner of my apartment building's entryway. I didn't think a whole lot of it, but then I woke up at 3:30am realizing that it might be a black widow. I spent about an hour looking at pictures of black widows on the Internet (which look suspiciously like this spider by my doorway) and reading about all of the damage their poison can do. Then I probably spent another hour...
I frequently get to play a game called "Now Why Did I Rent This Again?" This happens because I am too cheap frugal to get a Netflix account or go to my local video rental store, so I use the library for all of my video rental needs. The library system around here has a pretty awesome selection, which is nice, but they don't have many copies of anything. This means that I tend to request something in, say, June and I am put on the reserves list but it doesn't get to me until August, because everyone on the...
To whom it may concern: Let it be known that Zingerman's Bakehouse is baking their Green Olive Paesano Loaf this weekend. This bread only comes about twice a year as a special bake and I am very fortunately on their call-list but very unfortunately located in Ohio. So all you Ann Arborites, go and buy up this delicious bread this weekend and think of me as you chew. And try not to spew. You can also call ahead and have them reserve a loaf for you. Yay Zingerman's!...
I don't normally like to post about products in my blog because it feels like I'm selling something. But I want everyone to know what delicious chocolate things I am enjoying right now! Wheeee! I feel like Mindy Kaling. No Sugar Added Fudgsicles are theeeeeeee greatest thing ever. I can't stop eating them, which is okay because they only have 10g of carbohydrates (2g of sugar). Wheeee! Guilt-free sweets! They are artificially sweetened, but don't taste like artificial sweetener. This is good because I hate artificial sweeteners. The only side effect that I've found so far is that they cause...
As you may know, I went to Maryland/DC a few weekends ago to visit Katie and Cheryl and use some of the vacation time I've been building up. Photos are here! Friday I flew to Baltimore, which makes me think of Hairspray. Katie and I had dinner and bubble tea and... I can't remember what else we did. We must have just sat around talking until midnight! Saturday On Saturday Katie and had a nice late morning (which was good for recovering from a long Friday at work and sitting near teenagers while waiting for my flight) then set off...
Reading through the IMDb message board for The Pirates of Penzance¹, I found that someone had posted the address of Universal Studios' contact form, encouraging other fans to ask Universal to release Pirates on DVD. This is what I wrote: Please release The Pirates of Penzance on DVD! I was at a video rental store this weekend and discovered that they had phased out their VHS rentals in favor of DVDs. As VHS is phased out, so - sadly - is The Pirates of Penzance, as that is the only version of the movie that is currently available. Generations will...
On the subject of visits to medical professionals, I recently went to the dentist. I have seen a lot of my dentist in the last year or so, what with the fact that I kind of sort of put off going to the dentist for almost two years when I moved here. In the almost two years between cleanings, I developed cavities in all four quadrants of my mouth, so I've had four appointments for fillings in the last six months. And now cleaning time has rolled around again and she found a few more cavities to fill. I think...
On the fourth of July, I cut my finger while chopping vegetables. I cleaned it up, bandaged it, and went back to work. I cut myself right across the knuckle, unfortunately, so I kept either reopening it or trying to hold my finger completely still so it wouldn't reopen. Then, the following weekend I ran my finger into the bedpost in some kind of flailing incident¹. I happened to hit the same finger and the same knuckle I had already injured days before. The following week, my knuckle turned purplish and swelled up. Just as I was about to go...
Let me tell you a little story in three parts. Parte The Fyrst: 13 Julye 2007 Our heroyne and her fammilye did venture unto that happy land called The Bob Evans fore a layte dinnere. And they did enter into The Bob Evans, whereupon the door-master, guardian of the entrance, did ask how many were dyning in their partye. They did answer four, to which the door-master did respond in question, "Do you need any children's menus?" Our heroyne was well put out, for it had been nigh on three yeares since the last tyme she was accosted with suche...
Hello, The Internet. If you care to be all up in my personal business like that, I will tell you that apete and I broke up today. We couldn't make the long-distance thing work, it's mutual but it still hurts and that is all I care to share with The Internet. I hate telling people about breakups and I really hate being all Web 2.0 about it, but I feel like I have to tell people somehow. I wish I could just wear a sandwich board instead, or maybe have a t-shirt printed. At least this way I can just...
In the past, when I've taken notes or "live-blogged" a new Harry Potter book, it's been mostly because I knew that when reading later books, I would want to look back at notes from earlier books - especially hints and clues that seemed relevant but weren't covered in that book (and were potentially being saved for later). That's one of the sad things about HP7: there are no later books! But I think these notes will serve two purposes: to record my first reaction to things and theories as the book goes on (like in book 6, where every few...
I'm going to go (attempt to) hide from the Internet for a while¹ (even though this was the closest I've come to Harry Potter spoilers). I will return to you all in the wee hours of Saturday, when I begin my liveblogging of book 7 (following the popularity of my book 6 notes). Come back and read along! ¹ Who am I kidding? I will probably be on the Internet all day tomorrow. Sigh....
I am not normally all about the quizzes (well, not anymore), but this one is so enjoyable to take (if you like lolcats), that I shall post my results in the hopes that you will all take it too. Your Score: Cheezburger cat78% Affectionate, 53% Excitable, 71% HungrySure, you deserve one. You helped popularized lolcats from a running gag to an online sensation. Now mainstream media writes asinine columns on this 'phenomenon', students write theses on the topic, programming languages adopt the grammar, and losers write tests about them on dating sites. Now take your cheezburger and never touch the...
While I was out for a walk last week I passed the textbook store in town where I had reserved my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I dropped in to ask about their Harry Potter festivities, because I could remember being told that they were opening sometime before midnight, but I couldn't remember the exact time. I asked the woman behind the counter what time they were opening for Harry Potter and she said, "11:45. 11:40. Half an hour before midnight." I don't know if she was just making it up as she went along, if she...
You may be interested - nay, fascinated - to learn that I have just been granted posting privileges at the humorous list-based blog lists(dq). You can all rush over there immediately to read my hilaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarious first post: Lines from The Pirates of Penzance That Would Be Funnier If The Word “duty” Were Changed to “doody” It is a very mature and thought-provoking topic, and unfortunately I am also pretty sure that it marks the apex of my career as a humorous list-maker. It will all be downhill from here, folks! Many thanks to Alfie, who laughed with me in the...
To begin with, I have to say that I really liked the movie version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It is a huge challenge to turn an 896-page book into a 138-minute movie and they did pretty well with it. I do still miss the things that had to be cut, though. I shall hide further discussion of this subject in the extension, for those of you who have not seen the film yet....
I went to my weekly core-based toning class yesterday, offered through the Office of Employee Health and Well-Being (they do offer us a lot of opportunities to take care of ourselves here!). We seemed to focus a lot on the obliques. Obliques? I didn't even know I had obliques. I have certainly never used them before. I seem to manage to go through life, never putting myself in situations where my obliques are in any way stretched. So I contorted myself into all kinds of ridiculous positions to use my newfound obliques for the first time, and today they are...
Language Week 2007 is at an end! Thanks to all of you for taking the challenge and blogging in another language! I hope you got something out of the experience. Please take a moment to look at each other's Language Week posts. We have a lot of languages in our midst! tiff (French)Elisabeth (French - and a few others)christina (German)Kinuk (Polish, French, German, Japanese)Dixie (German)Ms. M (Italian)Hilda (Spanish)ola (Polish)swissmiss (German)Anne (French, Hungarian, Polish)Elemmaciltur (German)Twango (Italian)BoonzaierBabe (Afrikaans)Betsy (German, French, Dutch)Chillmost (German)moe (Spanish)heather (Spanish, Polish)Stephen (French)bentleywg (Spanish)Ceridwyn2 (Spanish)A (French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Arabic) If I've left anyone (or any language!)...
اذهب الى السينما لان احب الافلام. Ce soir je suis allée au cinéma avec mon directeur, sa copine, et sa famille à elle. Le film, Ratatouille, était très mignon et agréable. À la fin du film, j'ai quitté le groupe pour aller faire une promenade au centre-ville. Il faisait beau et frais ce soir. Tout le monde est sorti au centre-ville et - entourée de groupes et de couples - je me suis sentie seule. Quand je reste chez moi, c'est normal d'être toute seule mais dehors, dans le monde, il semble que je suis la seule personne qui n'a...
En mi viaje en Mexico y en el barco, comí demasiada azucar y ejercité demasiado poco. Estaba dificil tomar buenas decisiones! En el barco, había mucha comida buena y postres deliciosos y los camareros me las trajeron. Y en Mexico, busqué comida y bebidas sin hielo, sin lechuga y sin agua peligrosa. Entonces tomé muchas bebidas con alcohol o azucar (como la Coca-Cola) y comí mucho arroz y tortillas y pan. Ahora estoy en mi casa de nuevo. Nadie me hace comida! Necessito hacerla yo! No es justo. Por lo menos, quizas harĂ© selecciones mejores. (Translation below)...
Alors, on est mercredi, le "hump day" de la Semaine des Langues. Je me suis habillée en pyjama, sur le sofa, et je vais écrire aujourd'hui en français, une langue qui est beaucoup plus facile pour moi que l'arabe ou même l'español. C'est cool et relaxe. (J'adore le fait qu'en français, "relaxe" soit un adjectif.) Mais voilà le problème: en arabe, je peux discuter le temps et l'éducation. En español je peux commander les margaritas et les tacos (c'était très difficile là-bas de ne pas écrire "les margaritas y los tacos") et "pedir direcciones" et c'est à peu près tout....
Even the crockydiles are in on it! [Pearls Before Swine, 6/27/2007] Well, sort of....
Here is how much Arabic I've forgotten in the... oh, two months or so since the end of the semester: I sat down to write something in Arabic and realized that not only could I not think of how to write any Arabic phrases, I couldn't remember how to say them either. So I went to get my Arabic textbook. I couldn't find said Arabic textbook. Finally I remembered that it was in the bookcase in my "office" so I went and grabbed it. I opened it up and realized that I should consult my notebook as well. So I...
I think that deep down, Language Week is just about getting out of your comfort zone and getting in touch with the other languages you've got inside you. It is about actually using the foreign languages you learned in school or expressing yourself in your native tongue for once. It's about writing in a foreign language even if you can't write much or if what you write isn't grammatically correct. Thanks to everyone who's posted so far - I'll do a big wrap-up on Friday. If you haven't already commented here to let us know you're participating, please do. I'd...
He pasado una semana en México (o cerca de la costa de México). ¡Me gusté mucho! Normalmente, no quiero hablar idiomas extranjeros. ¡Tengo miedo! Pero en México, hablar el español tal vez es necessario. ¡Y puedo hablarlo cuando es necessario! (O cuando estoy barracha). En estas situaciones, puedo olvider que no conozco todas las palabras o la gramática o si algo es masculino o femenino, y puedo comunicar. Por ejemplo, hay un calle muy grande en Acapulco, y nuestro barco estaba del otro lado del calle. Estaba allí con mi amiga L, y nosotros pedimos direcciones. Pero no sabía como...
Or rather, good evening. But I've been so lazy today it might as well be the morning for all that I've gotten done. Anyway, I'm back in the USSR. Photos from my voyage can be found here and videos of fascinating things like whales spouting and cliff divers cliff-diving can be found here. Now I must go and prepare for Language Week! All this time in Mexico and in on-ship Spanish classes has inspired me not to devote the entire week to Arabic. Soy hispanohablante, yo! Por el momento. Hasta que yo olvido todo mi español¹. Ha! What I love...
Hi! I have had about 8 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours! That actually sounds like a lot more than it feels. I have been really stressing out about this trip: packing, making my connections, adjusting to life on the ship, worrying about seasickness, etc... all while dealing with a lot of other stuff like finding a new apartment (done!) and keeping up with students while I'm out of the office and while the university changes email systems during my absence. So with all the things to worry about (and I love to worry!) I haven't been sleeping...
Hide your heart, girl. Yes, soon it will be time for the fifth installment of everyone's favorite srah blah blah-hosted floating-all-around-the-summertime meme, Language Week. The rules of Language Week are as follows: You do not talk about Language Week.You do not talk about Language Week.There are no rules.Well, okay, there are a couple of rules but they're not very strict.Language Week 2007 is June 25-29. I am announcing it early so that you can study up and so that you can spread the word to the Entire Intarnest!Blog in a language that you don't usually blog in. You don't have...
I told everyone at work yesterday that I called in sick yesterday morning because I baked cookies on Sunday night and sampled my wares a little too much. This is the truth, but it is not the whole truth. As a result of my late-night sugar binging, my blood sugar dropped during the night and I woke up a zombie. Normally when I wake up with low-blood-sugar-zombie syndrome, I just eat some breakfast, take my pills and get on with my morning (or I assume I have the flu because I'm stupid and I forget sometimes that I am now...
I finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica Season 2 (which is evilly packaged as Season 2.0 and Season 2.5 just in order to stretch out the time it takes me to reserve and receive the DVDs at the library). I have to say, I was not thrilled. I think Season 1 was a lot better. It's sort of like Harry Potter, where book 1 was great because it set up this new imaginary world for us to explore, then in book 2 we didn't have that exciting sense of exploration and novelty anymore. I'm hoping that Season 3, whenever I get...
Last weekend (or rather two weekends ago, but I'm really behind on posting) I went to the movies. I didn't really intend to go, as I haven't been to the movie theatre in about five months (because I'm so cheap), but it turns out that in Ann Arbor I have friends and friends like to do social things and sometimes social things include going to the movies. So we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It was a very pleasant popcorn movie. It was overly complicated with everyone betraying everyone else, but that's what pirates do....
If my sister can liveblog American Idol, I can do it for the Lost season finale! Also, this will keep me from falling asleep like usual....
When I was driving to work yesterday, I thought, "Well, it's Tuesday. Gas prices are usually lowest on Wednesday or Thursday, but this is a holiday weekend, so I should probably fill my half-empty tank this evening when I get off work." Between driving past the gas station in the morning and the time I got off work, gas in my town went up 30¢ a gallon! Argh! I am obsessed with gas prices so I tend to watch them like a hawk so that I can save something like 20¢ on a fill-up, but this will probably be a...
But what will I blog about when there's nothing on TV???? Anyway, the best part of The Office last night (thanks to OfficeQuotes.us, which already has the transcript up!):...
This blog would like to take a moment to announce, before tonight's season finale of The Office, that it supports Pammy Pam "Fancy New" Beesly (Miss Beesly if you're nasty) in all her future endeavours. This blog is firmly Team Pam, rather than Jam, so this blog would be totally cool with it if, say, Jim made a move in tonight's episode and Pam refused him. This blog would think that was awesome, because Fancy New Beesly has made a lot of progress and personal growth this season, what with her courage and honesty and fire-walking and tire-changing and art-showing...
Hey readers, I think you're totally awesome so here's a link to a preview of the best new show of the fall! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Made you click! Okay, that was mean. I hope you survived the badness. In fact, that looks like the worst new show of the fall. Part of me can't believe they would put something on TV that a) sounds like such a bad idea and b) isn't even executed well. Then I remember that TV executives are pretty much idiots. To make up for my tomfoolery and all the...
I've been tagged by Tiff for this meme. Here are the rules: Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog. Ever since I started trying to change my diet because of the whole PCOS/insulin resistance thing, I am a big weenie when it comes to sweets. Whereas I could...
I am, as is well-documented, an idiot. So when I forgot to get my mom to take my measurements last weekend for my bridesmaid's dress, I put off doing it myself until today (they need to be ordered by tomorrow. I am frankly surprised I did it even a day before it was due). I figured there wouldn't be much to it, and the longer I could put off talking to a stranger on the phone, the better. Today I called up the bridesmaid-dress-place and gave the nice lady the information about which wedding party I belonged to, etc. Then...
I don't seem to be able to go a week without posting videos on here. It's a sickness. At least I'm mostly limiting myself to once-a-week rather than giving up altogether on posting original content. Saturday Night Live gets a lot of flak for not being funny anymore, but I'd be willing to wager that Saturday Night Live now is just as good as Saturday Night Live in the 70s or 80s. It's just more recent and fresh in people's minds. There were probably episodes of SNL that tanked back then and don't show up in reruns. There were lots...
This season of American Idol has been very disappointing. I probably say this every year, but this year it seems like I hate more people than I like. With any luck, Whiny Chris and Alien Phil will leave this week and we will be left with only talented people. Out of the other four (Blake, Lakisha, Jordin and Melinda) I don't really care who wins, because Blake is so much better than everyone else that he has already transcended American Idol and doesn't really need to win. It's not that he's a better singer than the other three (he's usually...
The entire month of May has been ruined for me, as of 6:30am on May 1st. Thanks, Lynn Johnston. DOWN WITH GRANTHONY! On the plus side, there's no need to worry about buying furniture, as Granthony can just make some extra room for you in his basement dungeon....
So I went out East this weekend and sadly enough, I did not see Baby-Sitters, Dunder-Mifflinites or celebrities. What I did see was lots of worksy-meetings, The Pirate Queen, the Circle Line boat tour and Times Square. Photos are here and shaky video of noisy, crowded Times Square (taken from a traffic island) is here:...
My favorite Threadless t-shirt design has been reprinted: Non sequiturs and haiku, together in one shirt? HURRAH! Now I just need to scrape together some cash that I can justify spending on a t-shirt. The justification is the tricky point. I am sure that I deserve a present for some reason or another. P.S. I am totally just posting this in the hopes that you will go to the site, buy a t-shirt and get me referral points so that I won't have to pay for my t-shirt at all. It is a clever scheme. Keep in mind that you...
I had my Arabic exam at 7:30 this morning. Who schedules an exam at 7:30am? I don't even have to be at work until 8am. So I didn't sleep well last night - not because I was worried about the exam itself¹, but because I was worried that I would roll over and go back to sleep when my alarm went off. I ended up getting out of bed a half hour before my alarm went off, because I didn't seem to be able to get back to sleep without worrying about that. Then I took some Advil Cold &...
Frightening realization: My new haircut makes me look less like Rachael Leigh Cook in She's All That and more like Rachael Leigh Cook as Mary Anne Spier in The Baby-Sitters Club. I am totally going to fit in in Stamford this weekend! Maybe I will pick up some baby-sitting gigs or solve a mystery while I am there. Or maybe I need to find a new hairstyle inspiration that is closer to my own age. (Speaking of the BSC, this is unspeakably awesome. So I will speak of it no more for the next five minutes, at least.)...
Herein lie spoilers for American Idol and Lost. Advance at your own risk!...
It's Thursday and The Office is back after a looooong hiatus! O happy day! Let us rejoice! This evening we shall finally discover how Roy follows up on his vow to kill Jim Halpert. First, let's enjoy Jim as we once knew him... That last part makes me laugh out loud every time I see it, and sometimes when I just think about it, too. And now let's watch Dwight's courageous investigation of Jim's theoretical murder:...
Current pet peeve: foliage SYLLABICATION: fo·li·age NOUN: 1a. Plant leaves, especially tree leaves, considered as a group. b. A cluster of leaves. 2. An ornamental representation of leaves, stems, and flowers, especially in architecture. ETYMOLOGY: Alteration (influenced by Latin folium, leaf) of Middle English foilage, from Old French foillage, from foille, leaf. Unless you can prove to me that you are Geoffrey Chaucer, please stop pronouncing this as FOIL·uj. Fortunately this is not a word I have to hear every day! If I worked in a nursery, I would probably have to kill someone....
At the end of April, I will spend a weekend visiting one of our study abroad providers in Stamford, Connecticut. Yes, that Stamford, would-be home of Dunder-Mifflin Northeast and the next major town to Stoneybrook. Wow. I am so awesome. Why don't I have any friends around here, again? In addition to visiting super-dibble Stamford, there will also be a "social outing" to New York City. It will be so special I might even call it... Super Special! Then I will glue glitter and feathers on my Kid-Kit and-- wait, what was I talking about? New York intimidates me more...
I've seen the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows US cover art all over the Intarnest¹. The US cover is quite boring - the O in Potter has a little wing on it, so I think Harry's supposed to be reaching for the most enormous O-shaped snitch anyone has ever seen. Either that or the gold fleck that I'm assuming is the wing is a strangely-shaped snitch itself, but that's weird too. Anyway, I find it bizarre that Harry is spending his time tooling around a Quidditch stadium, when I thought book 7 was supposed to be about the...
Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™ When I saw that Serene and Irk had posted their results from this quiz, and read the glowing praise they gave it, I thought "No way. No Internet quiz could guess things about me just from the pictures I pick. I'm a rebel! I'm a special snowflake! You don't know me, Internet!" But other than the fact that it says I'll "take experience over comfort every time, whether under the canvas or under the stars" (a statement which smacks of - ugh - camping) and its overblown idea of the importance of...
I will be flying from Dayton to Atlanta from about 3-4:30 today, then from Atlanta to Seattle from about 7 (EDT) to 9:30 (PDT). In all my 9 or so hours of transit, I understand that I will receive complimentary beverage service and maybe up to three snack items for the journey. I'm leaving town at 11am in order to drive to the airport, which means that I will have two meals to cover on the road. I brought myself a cheese sandwich to tide myself over, but I imagine that by the time I arrive in Atlanta, I will...
It takes me forever to get around to getting a haircut. Frequently I'll go three or four months between haircuts, because it seems like such a waste of money to spend it on my head, which I hardly even ever look at. But I thought it was important to chop off some of the stringy mess so that I could look presentable in Seattle, so off I went to the salonnnnn¹. The hair-cutting lady² and I didn't get off to a good start, because she asked me if I was a student, then was relentless in her quest to convince...
Using my awesome psychic powers, which only fail me oh, about every day, I have determined that the 2006 2007 NCAA Basketball champions will be... Gonzaga University in a surprise win over Michigan State. Start dousing the couches! Things will be aflame in East Lansing the evening of April 2nd! I will not go into quite as much detail as I did in 2005, but this year, my bracket selection strategies include: "We work with their study abroad programs" (Butler, Virginia, Wright State), "They're nearby and if they win, then Ohio State is out of the tournament" (Xavier), "They have...
Now that you all have your Gravatars¹, here are some other bloggety-things to dabble in, which I have varying levels of enthusiasm for but play with nonetheless: CoComment - A comment-tracking system to follow conversations you've participated in and track your comments across the blogosphere. If you only comment on one or two sites it's probably not worth it, but if you're all over the place (like I am) it might be worth checking out. Rather than leaving a comment on a blog and forgetting about it forever, you can keep track of where you've been and see when other...
Mma Ramotswe is coming to film! I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I'm excited about the opportunity to expose The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to a wider audience, but on the other hand, I don't see how any movie can measure up to my mental image of the book or any actress to my mental image of Precious Ramotswe. It is nice to see, though that the movie is actually being filmed in Botswana. If nothing else, we will get to see the scenery!...
As long as I am sitting on my butt on the couch instead of getting up and walking around, I suppose I should tackle one or two of the blog posts I've been planning since last week, but which exist so far only in note-form. Who wants to hear my thoughts about the Oscars? Huh? Who? Note to self: blog this stuff a lot earlier. Each topic deserves its own post, so in this pointless explanatory post, I will just throw in these two little tidbits of travel information that I keep meaning to mention but which aren't involved enough...
If you are a regular reader/commenter here, you may have noticed that each comment is accompanied by a little icon. There's my "camera in front of the face" icon or the grey default "commenter" icon. Some other commenters have their own icons, too. (You can see an example of other commenters' icons in use here.) This icon is called a Gravatar and is linked to your email address, so that when you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog using your Gravatar-linked email address, your Gravatar pops up next to your comment. I would have liked to have posted this...
I bought another container of mayonnaise today. That sounds like the beginning of a great novel or, more likely, a Bulwer-Lytton entry. But no, it is just a post about mayonnaise. I bought another container of mayonnaise today. I don't use a whole lot of mayonnaise so I'm sure the last time I bought some was months ago. As I threw out the old container, I noticed its expiration date: July 2, 2007. I consulted my brand new mayonnaise and found that it is scheduled to expire July 19, 2007. Apparently Hellman's knows something I didn't. But now I do....
So it seems like everyone's really excited about some owl this weekend. They're even throwing big parties for it, and they're going to be televising it for, like, 3.5 hours this evening. I don't really get it or why everyone thinks it's so superb, but I hear they're going to have some pretty good commercials on in between the avian coverage, so I guess I'll watch that. Go little Exlee, or whatever your name is....
I have been a walking fiend for the last few weeks! Unless I break my leg in the next two days, I am on track to actually meet my month's walking goal for the first time since October. Go srah!...
Pancake! This is just a reminder, since I never remember about this until the last minute, that this Friday is Candlemas. So get your crêpes and tamales ready! I never seem to manage to hold on to one crêpe recipe from year to year, so I don't have a tried-and-true favorite to give you. Here's the one I'll probably be using, though....
I've been having some trouble over the past few days with a pain in my eye socket. I had myself convinced that I had a stye or a scratch on my eye that was rapidly getting infecteder or that Scott Baio gave me pinkeye, so I made an appointment with my doctor ASAP. I am rather sensitive about my eyes and that tends to make me panic and expect the worst, so I wanted to nip this in the bud before my eye got so infected it had to be removed and I would have to wear an eye patch...
For more than a month now, I have been working my way through the book-on-tape of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's such a long book that I haven't reread it since it first came out, and I thought I probably ought to have a refresher before the movie comes out. The book-on-tape format works well for a book like this - I just pick up where I left off every time I get in the car and don't have to lug that huge tome around. I started it before driving up to Michigan for Christmas, have...
Last night around 7:30, I checked the TVGuide.com listings to find out which channel the season premiere of Beauty and the Geek¹ was on. And I couldn't find it anywhere! That's okay, the TVGuide.com listings are sometimes weird and sometimes they are a day off and it takes some fiddling to get them to catch up. So I checked out Yahoo! TV, my back-up² source for TV listings when TVGuide is being a spaz. It wasn't on there either! I resigned myself to the fate of having to illegally super-legally download episodes from the Internet and started watching a DVD,...
Dear Sexy Librarian Friends, (Wouldn't it be great if all of my posts started like that? Oh, it wouldn't? My bad.) It turns out that you have more to worry about than Ken Jennings' hordes. Not once but twice in this very evening I have witnessed fiendish library abusers taking cards right out of the card catalogue! And sometimes throwing them around! You would think someone would invent some sort of... rod... that would go through... holes... in the bottom of the card to keep them in place. Or perhaps even a computerized catalogue system of some sort! Yes, I...
I can't even describe how weird it was to watch the Rose Bowl Parade on Monday and see hundreds of Star Wars stormtroopers marching in formation. It was like The Empire had taken over Pasadena. It was awesome and it was weird and I thought it was totally cool and I was kind of embarrassed that I thought that. As with all the weird-ass Oklahoma floats that were there for no reason (go have your own parade, Oklahoma, and get out of ours!), there was no connection to the Rose Bowl - it was just a chance for people to...
The holiday season was also significantly marked by the passing of President Gerald Ford, who is probably more of an icon around the srahfam household than... most households. Srahdad was scheduled to have the Christmas week off, but unfortunately those plans changed when Our President passed away on the 26th. It's nice that President Ford had one last Christmas with his family... and that he didn't have to see Michigan lose (again) yesterday....
Hello Internet! I had a relatively Internet-free week (mostly just keeping up with WalkerTracker so that I could actually remember what caused me such abyssmal step-counts). It was awesome, but now I have a lot of reading to catch up on. As for me, I got to spend time with the boyfriend and his family as well as srahfam, have many many Christmases (Christmii?), see Spamalot, and go walking at the mall a couple of times. Now I'm back home with TONS of stuff to unpack, which will probably keep me busy until the next time I go home. This...
(for Jamelah's story challenge) Joey killed the headlights and put the car in neutral as he pulled into a spot in the motel parking lot. He poked Virginia in the shoulder and she slowly woke up, stretching and yawning. "Where are we?" she rubbed her eyes. "Just crossed the state line into Nevada. I think we'd better stop for the night." "How much longer do we have to go?" "I'd say about four hours or so, but I don't think I can drive it tonight." "I'm sorry, babe," she said, hoisting herself out of her seat, "I'd take over but...
I am an inveterate list-maker, so here is a list of some of my favorite Christmas songs, inspired by all of the Muzak and All Christmas All The Time radio stations I've been subjected to during my holiday shopping. "Carol of the Bells" "Sleigh Ride" - Instrumental versions only, and especially the one with horse-whinnying at the end. "The Nutcracker Suite" - No particular song within the suite - I pretty much like the whole thing. It's been my cookie-baking soundtrack lately. "O Holy Night" - Choral versions, because soloists get all divalicious and operatic about it and I would...
I had my Arabic final exam this morning at 7:30. 7:30? It was still dark out! It was like going to an exam in the middle of the night! I start work at 8am, but that half-hour was enough to make a huge difference in my mental state. And that mental state was: Huh? First of all, I thought it would be really clever not to take my normal class bag with me today, because I wouldn't need books or anything. The load was much lighter, but it didn't speed me up any, because I misjudged where the exam building...
Things that I am way more upset about than I probably rationally ought to be but they're so frustrating they make me want to gouge my other people's eyes out: Today's For Better or For Worse and the boring wimpy stupid whiny character of Anthony (but I'm not the only one)WLWT pre-empting the entire brand-new NBC Thursday-night lineup for a stupid BENGALS game...
I have not done an update on my Arabic progress in a long time. It is not because I don't love you or because I don't love Arabic (though it does get harder and harder to catch up every time I go out of town and have to miss class). It is because with increased complexity comes increased difficulty in looking up all those danged letters. I can barely spell as it is, but doing so online means that I have to write a word out as باب to make it look like باب. And that's only a three-letter word....
Are you ready for the excitement? Are you ready for the drama? Are you ready for the SEQUEL TO END ALL SEQUELS? Are you ready for The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines? You'd better be, suckah! This kind of cinematic masterpiece only comes around every two years or so. I only hope that this latest episode will tell the tale of the time-traveling ninjas introduced at the very end of the last one. Also more Bob Newhart, please. Why oh why don't I have a full cable package that includes TNT? Why am I depriving myself so?...
She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah!- Morality for Beautiful Girls...
On 30 Rock this week, Tina Fey's character bonded with another single 30-something woman over their common fear of choking and dying alone in their apartments and not being discovered until their neighbor's dog starts sniffing and scratching at the door. Bridget Jones had a similar fear of dying alone and being eaten by alsatians¹. I am not 30-something, but - as an inveterate worrier, I also have plenty of these fears. When I hear scary scary reports about rabies on NPR, I start thinking, "What will I do when I am inevitably attacked by rabid wild animals?" When I...
Things that are difficult: Eating peas with a fork Things that are almost impossible: Eating peas with a fork in complete darkness Last night, I was very much looking forward to the opportunity to watch Ugly Betty live for the first time (rather than on tape or on the Internet), since The Office was a repeat. Then at just about 8pm, the power went out. I waited for a few minutes, but it didn't come back. I panicked at first, because I had to traverse the clutter of my apartment to scrounge around for my flashlight, whose batteries turned out...
All I seem to blog about these days is TV. That and walking, and occasionally the odd dream or two. That's not unusual, because I don't do much more than work, watch TV, walk and sleep. Occasionally I do laundry. I know, it's really exciting. Well, I'm off for a site visit to three universities in England and Ireland tomorrow. I don't know what kind of adventures and scrapes I'll get into, but I'm sure that it will be more interesting than my life here. In fact, I will probably be so busy that I won't have time to blog...
I dreamt last night that my whole family went to Paris. We were going to show the exchange student the view from some tall building, so we got in the elevator to go up as high as we could. Just as the elevator was about to leave, Billy Bob Thornton and his entourage got on to go to the penthouse. There was some kind of elaborate locking mechanism for getting to the penthouse, so they started engaging that, then Billy Bob wandered off the elevator. We waited for, like, fifteen minutes, then I got off the elevator and found Billy...
We went to the Hillsdale County Fair today, where I was able to witness (and pet!) the Full Triumvirate of Cute: Donkeys Bunnies and wiggly jumping Dachshunds!...
Things that I learned at/about Cincinnati's Oktoberfest: Cincinnati (or Zinzinnati)'s Oktoberfest claims to be the second biggest in the world!Life is more fun with a chicken on your head.There is more to Oktoberfest than just beer and sausage (but not much more)German margaritas taste just like regular ones (they were also selling real German style Cajun crawfish etouffée!)There is not much actual walking to do at Oktoberfest - more milling around and pushing through crowds.If you drive around in circles enough in Cincinnati, you will eventually find your way out Things that A learned at Cincinnati's Oktoberfest: Srah is a...
I finally bit the bullet and got an Ohio driver's license. I live here, I'm registered to vote here, my car has Ohio plates, and my driver's license says I'm from here. I suppose I'm now officially a resident of the......
The latest news from my Arabic class is that I got my HIGHEST STEPCOUNT DAY EVER yesterday. Wait, no, that's not related. But I did. The latest news from my Arabic class is that I have a crush on the "calligraphy professor" who lives in our textbook's accompanying DVDs. He's a scholarly, bespectacled type, who knows how to wield a pen. Ah, how I love a man with stylish writing implements! Yes, I am insane. As we learn to connect more letters, I am learning more and more words that can be made out of those letters. So now I...
Yesterday I walked to the library as part of my HIGHEST STEPCOUNT DAY EVER. On the way there, another pedestrian passing in the other direction said, "Great shirt." I looked down and saw that I was wearing a Michigan sweatshirt. Ah, a fellow Wolverines fan! When I got to the library to pick up the books I had on reserve, the clerk said, "I don't know if I should give these to you." I thought, 'What have I done? Do I have enormous fines I don't know about? Did I reserve porn??' She continued, "... wearing that shirt." Aha! A...
Seen yesterday whilst pursuing my HIGHEST STEPCOUNT DAY EVER: Many people have suggested that lowering gas prices is a ploy by the GOP to entice people to vote Republican this November. I, myself, do not think Oh my, such good prices on gas! Thank you, Ken Blackwell! Clearly the price of this gas is thanks to YOU! Here is my vote!. Who does that? If that's actually the case, then I'm mostly just disgusted that the Republican party thinks so poorly of us. I will take my cheap gas, thank you, and drive to the polling location where I will...
Raw sewage taints sacred Jordan River [...] The faithful wet their faces and arms, shouting 'amen' and 'hallelujah' after each baptism, unaware that just downstream, raw sewage was flowing into the water. That's the split personality of one of the world's most sacred rivers. Small sections of the Jordan's upper portion, near the Sea of Galilee, have been kept pristine for baptisms. But Israel, Jordan and Syria have siphoned off huge amounts of river water to meet their needs in this arid region, and pumped waste water back in. [...] And here I thought that burning sensation was the eternal...
I posted this as a response to a call for brownie recipes in the LiveJournal Cooking community, but it occurred to me that a) you might like to read it too and b) (and possibly more importantly) the front page of my blog was starting to get empty. So here you are: srah's favorite brownie recipe 1½ stick butter 4 oz. unsweetened chocolate 2 cups sugar 3 eggs 2 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt ½ tsp baking powder 1 cup flour Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan, remove from heat. Stir in sugar, then eggs, then vanilla, then...
Thanks to Ed, I have discovered Walker Tracker, which has many of the features of the previous step-tracking site I was using, but with more community interaction and graphs! Read my step logger! Watch my progress go up and down! Join this one now!...
Twice today I found myself talking about the way college was "back in my day." Yes, it's official, turning 26 has turned me into a grumpy old coot. I'm not ready! Where has my youth gone? First, there was an email sent out to students reminding them that they are responsible for reading their university email at least twice a week. It would seem that students are coming into the school with so many email addresses that they tend to neglect their university email altogether and miss important announcements. BACK IN MY DAY, I was one of the only people...
I got a haircut on Monday. What I have discovered so far is that it looks fine if I take the time to blow-dry and style it, but if I try to let it just air-dry, I look like Ramona Quimby, Age 8....
I got my invitation to the SI Reunion today. It exhorts its recipients to: Iron your clothes!Pack your suitcase!Drive, fly or sail to Ann Arbor! What the heck? So we have to start ironing our clothes now? Thanks a lot, SI. What kind of computer nerds would we be if we showed up with our clothes ironed? How would they tell us apart from the archivists? I suppose next you'll be telling us we have to wear pants. I shall not be attending, in protest of this clothes-ironing policy. Either that or because I will be out of the country....
Up for playing the only blog game that shamelessly encourages you to lie to your friends and family? Get your lies ready because the fourth installment of Obfuscation takes place on Friday, August 18th...... On Friday, August 18 you’ll post 3 stories.Two false and one true orTwo true and one falseReaders have to pick the false story(ies), leaving their guess in the comments. (Make sure you let them know which version of the game you’re playing.) ... More details are available at LunaNiña!...
All this hullabaloo about liquids on planes is making me even more paranoid than I usually am. I spend more time than I should during flights thinking about ways that, if I were a terrorist, I could kill people or hijack a plane using things I carried-on or things that were already on the plane when I got there. They'll confiscate your nail clippers, but I once got an in-flight meal that came with a plastic fork and spoon and a metal knife. Nice, airline. It was pretty rounded and dull, but I bet I could get a file on...
Joyeux anniversaire, Tu n'es pas mon frère, Je ne vais pas te voir aujourd'hui mais j'espère que tu n'es pas en colère, Joyeux anniversaire! (Ben... c'est pas pire que les autres...) (translation in the extended entry)...
(see extended post for translation)...
Mince! J'ai failli oublier la Semaine des Langues aujourd'hui! Ce soir j'ai fait du chili végétarien à la srah. Ça consisite des tomates, des haricots rouges, des champignons, des épices, et beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup d'oignons. C'est quelque chose que j'ai inventé en France quand j'avais peur de cuisiner de la viande. Ça répresente toutes les groupes alimentaires: les proteines, les fruits... et beaucoup beacoup beaucoup d'oignons. J'adore les oignons! Alors, je n'avais pas de projets pour bloguer au suject de mon chili - je voulais écrire sur Le Retour du Jedi¹. Les seules personnages au palais de Jabba qui parlent...
Dear Associated Press, I have been an avid reader of Ken Jennings' blog for a whole month but I never even got how eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil he was. Silly me, when I read the blog post about Jeopardy! last week, I thought it was a joke. Thanks for clearing that up, Associated Press. When Ken said: First up, the categories. Maybe when Art Fleming was alive, America just couldn’t get enough clues about “Botany” and “Ballet” and “The Renaissance,” but come on. Does every freaking category have to be some effete left-coast crap nobody’s heard of, like “Opera,” or, um, “U.S. History”...
Je pense que je vous ai dit que je vais commencer à étudier l'arabe en automne. J'ai déjà rencontré le prof; il paraît très sympa et ça m'interesse beaucoup d'étudier le Moyen-Orient et le monde arabophone¹ et de mieux comprendre ces cultures-là. Mais c'est la langue qui me fait peur! Tout le monde m'a dit que l'arabe est très très très difficile et qu'il va me falloir dix ans pour le parler couramment. Ah bon? Il m'a fallu à peu près neuf ans pour parler couramment le français (une langue qui est beaucoup plus proche de l'anglais), alors je suppose...
En mars je suis allée en Israël pour visiter les universités là-bas qui acceuillent les étudiants étrangers. En mai c'était Montréal, où je suis allée assister à une conférence sur l'éducation internationale. Ce mois je vais voyager à travers le ouest des États-Unis, vers Seattle. J'irai en Angleterre et en Irlande en Octobre pour une autre visite aux centres d'études étrangers. On a parlé un peu d'un voyage en Inde en décembre pour assister au mariage de Sylvie (mais avec mes finances ça ne va peut-être pas être possible... on verra...). Il va peut-être y avoir une autre visite au...
I went to see The Devil Wears Prada today with some friends here in Srahtown. We met in the lobby, then someone led us into the theater, which was already dark. The room was pretty packed, but we managed to split the group up into only two adjacent rows. The previews began, including a trailer for John Tucker Must Die, an incredibly stupid looking film. It was only while this rather embarassingly explicit trailer was playing that I started to notice that the theater was full of pre-teens, most of them boys. I mentioned to someone else in the group...
I hereby decree that Language Week 2006 will be held July 24-28, 2006, because I will be in town that week. It would be nice if I could nail Language Week down to the same time every year, but this has never been the case. Such is the brilliant unpredictability of Language Week! Or rather, and more accurately, such is my forgetfulness. The rules of Language Week are as follows: You do not talk about Language Week.You do not talk about Language Week.There are no rules.Well, okay, there are a couple of rules but they're not very strict.Blog in a...
In case you haven't heard, Google is opening up some operations in Ann Arbor. There has been much talk about why Google chose Ann Arbor. Most people thought it was because Larry Page, one of the founders of the company, is from Michigan and attended U-M. But apparently it's just because of all the beaches and lighthouses....
I have been trying to blog about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest for almost a week now, but I have been so ENRAGED with RAGE that it... flames... flames, on the side of my face. Heaving... heaving breaths... Well, I think I am mostly sort of cooled off enough to write about it now, but hopefully not too cool to express to you my RAGE. When the movie ended, I could barely speak in full sentences, such was my RAGE. The only thing that I could utter between my spitting and clawing at the screen was an threat...
Me at 11pm last night: Boy, I can't wait to go to Cincinnati for the Fourth of July fireworks on the Ohio River. I suppose I should soon go about finding where I should go for these fireworks, and at what time they will begin on the Fourth. It will certainly be nice to have a way to celebrate Independence Day, since everything will be closed and almost everyone I know has fled the state and I don't own a grill or a copy of 1776. Yessirree, I am looking forward to this. Fireworks on the Ohio River will be...
I keep getting error messages on my blog. I'm hoping this has something to do with the server upgrades they're doing today and not that I broke my blog. Anyway, what seems to work so far is constantly reloading the page until it finally comes up. If you don't see my blog at some point today, wait a few minutes and try again. ... not that you can see this post if you're getting a server error message. Sigh. Update: Allllllllllllllllll better!...
Launch in external player FYI, "what I thought they were doing earlier" was humping each other. Alfie claims that the red light on my camera scared them and that it will be ALL MY FAULT when there are no baby aardvarks at the Cincinnati Zoo next year. Sorry, zoogoers!...
I am giving presentations every afternoon this week. Once that microphone is clipped onto my sweater, I turn into a character in a television documentary. Once I get up in front of people I have an urge to shout GOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING VIETNAM!, or possibly quote Benito Mussolini and bang on a podium for a while. Coincidentally, I also have a candy dish on my desk in order to lure young persons in my direction. All I need is a beet farm and a poster of freaky saxophone-babies and I will be complete!...
Montreal is awesome. I am doing better than expected with speaking French - instead of avoiding French altogether I string together these mangled franglais thoughts in my mind and occasionally spew them out to whoever my victim is. Example: Shuttle driver with French-Canadian accent: Which hotel are you going to? Me: Le Fairmont Reine Elizabeth¹. SDWFCA: Fairmont Reine Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth? Me: Oui. Yes. SDWFCA: Vous parlez français? You speak English? Me: (stammers) Oui. Yes. Les deux. Both. Je parle... I speak, yeah. So yeah, that was clear. And efficient. Let's speak both languages at once! And translate for ourselves!...
No, not so much. I am off to the Great White North on Tuesday for a conference followed by some Staying Around and Sightseeing. Youpi! So far I have made all of my Montreal hotel reservations in English. I am a-feared of the Quebecois French. I'm afraid of all their funny ways of saying things and their different accent and their reputation for looking down on French-from-France and for speaking perfect accentless English to people who try to speak French to them. I was telling someone at dinner that I might just chicken out and try to pass myself off...
Dear Planet Earth, In going through the list of great characters... few come to mind. Blanche Dubois, from "Streetcar Named Desire"... Willy Loman, from "Death of a Salesman"... Screech, from "Saved By The Bell" and, of course, Big Man from "Trapped in the Closet". If you ever want to see acting at its finest... acting that will make you re-examine your life... acting that will make you see the world for the first time... watch the 2005 hip-hopera raperetta music video serial monstrosity Trapped in the Closet. It is truly scrumtralescent. Yes, this weekend I saw yet another example of...
Apete and I had a Real Authentic Cincinnati Weekend last weekend. Or at least a Real Authentic Cincinnati Saturday. First, we went to the Cincinnati Zoo. I hadn't been to the zoo yet and it was very exciting and nice. I've been to the Detroit and Toledo zoos a million times over, but it was nice to see new animals that I've never seen before, like the Takin and the Sumatran Rhinoceros. There's so much to learn about animals! Zoos sometimes make me sad, because the animals are caged up in middle America and being hooted at by humans instead...
Alrighty, my High School Mix CD is done. My CDs will be going out a day late, but they'll be going out! Read on for the track listing:...
It's a little hard to see in a small version like this, but in the middle of this picture, there's a man with his chin resting on his hand, waiting for someone to come along and buy the clothing and whatever else he has on his table. This picture is currently my desktop background at work, so I spend a lot of time looking at it. Yesterday I was having another one of those imaginary conversation episodes where I was trying to buy a scarf (I think it was the peach-colored one) from the man inside my computer screen. I...
My Get Out Of The Apartment Activity for the day was to go get a cup of tea at a local coffeehouse and finish my book. In getting out of the house, I managed to indulge in a little eavesdropping for once (Humbert doesn't talk much). The girls sitting behind me were graduate students in English but their whole conversation was about blogging. About their blogs, about the blogs they read, about blogs in general, the blogosphere, blog society, blog blog blog blog blog. If you have a blog, you probably know the ear-perking experience of hearing the word "blog"...
... and then some other stuff could happen and it could be like free associations....
I spent most of my early life listening to Oldies music. In order to prepare my track list for smg's CD swap, I went and got out my old mix tapes from high school and scouted out which tracks I also had in CD or mp3 form. A mix from 1994 includes "Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Byrds, "Bobby's Girl" by Marcy Blaine, "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" by Cher, "Downtown" by Petula Clark, "Oh Sweet Pea" by Tommy Roe and "Walk Away Renee" by the Left Banke as well as a smattering of showtunes and some more contemporary songs. I...
I've been tagged with this meme by ze Fraulein. It's hard to find weird things about me that I haven't blogged. Well, I think I haven't blogged about these... Every night when I get into bed, I think about arms reaching out to grab my legs. This never happened when I had the same bed at my parents' house. What's particularly stupid is that there is this huge plastic box under my bed to hold wrapping supplies and it takes up all the space where the leg-grabber would be and I can see the box sitting there even as I...
Alright, you've convinced me - the point is not to avoid carbOHYDRATE-rich foods altogether, but to eat them in moderation. So I will buy myself almonds and convince myself to snack on those instead of all the lovely lovely candy in the candy bowl on my desk. For the record, Blue Diamond Lime 'n Chili Almonds are awesome (I went out and bought some the last time I got on a protein kick). Sunkist Buttered Up Almond Munchies are not, but in their defense I should have read the package better. With a name like "Buttered Up" I thought they...
I had a doctor's appointment yesterday wherein I learned that I am, it would appear, a fat old woman trapped in a tiny young body. As she diagnosed me with PCOS and some glucose intolerance (both related to the diabetes that runs in my family), she kept telling me how unusual it was for me to have these problems because they're usually found in obese people who are older than me and "YOU'RE ONLY 25! AND YOU WEIGH 111 POUNDS¹!" Yeah, that doesn't really make me feel any better. I was told for years that the way to avoid diabetes-related...
Yet again, I have put off the Unconscious Mutterings for so long that I have two sets to present at the same time. So I shall publish my free associations and then I shall be gone, for there is a tornado watch. So I will put away my computer and hide in the bathroom if I hear a siren. Such is the life of srah!...
When we were in Jerusalem, one of our stops was to a diamond factory and wholesaler's. The generation divide in our group was most evident here, where all the 20- and 30-somethings browsed around and looked at the cases, got scared away by the overbearing salespeople who followed us around the room and went and sat down on the other side of the room to wait for everyone else to finish shopping and buying. None of us were particularly interested in buying diamonds or other jewelry and we certainly didn't have the budget. We weren't big jewelry people and I...
I am eating a Dole Tropical Fruit Bowl¹, which is made up of pineapple and some pinkish chunks and some yellowish chunks and some other yellowish chunks with a slightly different texture. I can't decide if the pink chunks or the firm yellow chunks are my favorite, but the point is, while this fruit salad is delicious, I have no idea what I'm eating. I think there's papaya in there, and maybe some guava. There might be passion fruit, or maybe mango. Because of my ignorance of the world of tropical fruit, I feel that it is time to make...
How do you pronounce the word "err", as in "the action done by humans, as opposed to the divine act of forgiveness"? I pronounce it one way, but I heard it a different way on the radio. Dictionary.com informs me that one was accepted as correct but the other is gaining ground, to the point where both are now acceptable. Just wondering what the average pronunciation of my readers is......
So there's this website, creatively titled DressKevin.com, where you can... dress Kevin. He says that he will dress in whatever pieces get the most votes, whether or not they go together. Yesterday Fark.com got wind of the site and managed to make him wear argyle socks to the gym. BORING. I remember the outfit being much worse, so either Fark was outvoted (unthinkable!) or he didn't really wear everything that got the highest votes. There have been pretty bad outfits in the past, but there's so much potential to be worse. Let's all vote together and try to dress Kevin...
Uh... American Idol. As a group, the girls are more talented than the guys, but they also have less personality and are less interesting. I know that you are all clamoring for my thoughts on this evening's episode, so I will just cut and paste an email that I sent to my AI-watching friends this evening, because I am lazy. Suck it!...
This morning, I took the Glucose Challenge and I won! At least... I think I won. They're going to let me know. I guess they have to wait for the voting public to weigh in. Actually, come to think of it, I don't remember seeing any of the other contestants. Or any cameras. This is the worst reality show ever! Well, that ate two hours out of my life. Actually, it ate a lot more, if you count all the time I spent thinking about food when I was supposed to be fasting 10-12 hours before the test. And if...
Songies galore are in my head, only to be released through the power of free associations!...
Which syllable do you stress in the word "insurance"? I am just starting to figure out that I have moved far enough south that the stress has changed syllables from what I'm used to. I won't prejudice your answer by telling what I've moved to and from. Also, people in this area seem to feel free to use "smashed" as an adjective to describe food preparation techniques. I know I've seen that at least three times, but I can't remember where the third was. To me, "smashed" does not connote "awesome food-type goodness" but rather describes "detritus after a visit...
There may be spoilers mixed in here, so if you have not yet watched all the shows you ought to, then you'd better cover your eyes as you scroll down the page and have a trusted friend tell you when to open them. This is the extent of my non-spoiling efforts. So there. FIRST OF ALL, please have it be known that I saw The Last Temptation of Homer on TV Tuesday night and later read this thread on Fark and as a result, the name "Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo" has been echoing in my brain for hours now. Whenever...
Sometimes my blog posts serve to inform others, and sometimes they serve to record my thoughts so that I do not make the same mistake over and over again. For the record, Glaceau Vitaminwater "Focus" kiwi-strawberry flavored beverage is a mistake I would prefer not to make again and also one that I would like to warn the world about. Isn't that handy? All that this beverage is managing to make me "focus" on is the fact that it tastes bad. That and the fact that it claims to be a drink made up of vitamins + water but also...
While I generally have some kind of anxiety about using the phone, I can usually just suck it up and git 'er done. However, I put off setting up an appointment for a haircut for a couple of weeks. I don't know why it was so hard, but I kept thinking, "Naaah, I'll do it later." Maybe I suspected, deep down, that if I waited long enough, the salon would call me. I called last Friday, hoping that I could get an appointment for Monday evening. No dice. The next time she was free after 5 was Wednesday. Alas! My...
My favorite news story of the day today, as heard on NPR's The World: GIANT FLESH-EATING BEAVERS TERRORIZE SOUTH AMERICA!!!1oneone (Note: This is perhaps not the actual headline, but that's what it should have been.)...
Be it hereby known that there is no order, chronological or preferential, to the things I have listed below. So let it be written, so let it be done. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Four jobs I’ve had: library shelverEnglish teaching assistantstudy abroad counselorbabysitter Four movies I can watch over and over: TampopoPride & Prejudice starring Wet Colin FirthAirplane!Amélie Four places I’ve lived: Cusset, FranceAnn Arbor, MI, USAAlbion, MI, USAGrenoble, France Four TV shows I love: Arrested DevelopmentLostBeauty & the GeekHouse, M.D. Four places I’ve vacationed: North Myrtle Beach, SC, USAAurillac, FranceAberdeen, ScotlandAntwerp, Belgium Four of my favorite dishes:...
Heard on NPR this afternoon¹: "The Senator raised concerns that if Alito were to sit on the Supreme Court, the bench would tilt dangerously to the right." DUDE! There's no reason to bring the judge's weight into this! ––––– ¹ Perhaps not exact phrasing, but pretty close....
I have discovered some inconsistencies in my AFI Top 100 list. I had some question as to whether I'd seen Tootsie all the way through before starting this endeavor and that seems to have thrown my count off. Either way, I've seen it all the way through now. I also wasn't sure if I'd seen Dances With Wolves all the way through or if I'd only seen part of it, but let me put it this way: I am not watching Dances With Wolves again. So now that I've gone through the list again and ended up with a different...
WHEREAS there is no content in my blog; WHEREAS the Unconscious Mutterings have been posted but have been sitting around festering in my Inbox; WHEREAS Unconscious Mutterings take up room on the page; RESOLVED that here are some free associations....
I went to a meetup.com Movie Fans group this weekend in Cincinnati. We saw Brokeback Mountain, which was very good and silent and moving. After that, I did a little shopping around and figured as long as I'd already driven that far, I might as well get another movie out of it. So I went to see Munich. I'm afraid that any deep thoughts I was having about Brokeback Mountain have now been stricken from my mind, because Munich overpowered my evening's moviegoing experience. I spent about 2 and a half hours in a constant state of nervous tension. I...
I haven't blogged much lately - this is about 33% due to the fact that I went away last weekend and didn't have access to my email for both of it and 33% due to the fact that I just got My First Internet but I also got TV and haven't hooked up the wireless router yet. As I must now spend all of my time glued to American Idol and Beauty and the Geek, that doesn't leave much time for being glued to the computer in the office. The other 34% is that I keep meaning to blog something...
I guess it's been kind of a slow period for my mission to watch all of the AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies, seeing as I went home for more than a week and didn't take any of the DVDs with me. Luckily, apete got one of them for Christmas, so I did actually manage to make some progress. Now I'm back on top of things... and I'm watching The Thorn Birds, which is not in the Top 100 and is about 700,000 hours long. Oh well. But here are the ones I have watched recently: #59: Mutiny on the Bounty...
Remember all that delicious Internet I was stealing? Well now, two and a half months later, it's all come to an end. It was working fine at the beginning of the week, but since about Wednesday, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I can't hear myself think because half of my brain is trying to eavesdrop on the two girls speaking French across the room! Anyway, since about Wednesday I haven't been able to connect. I think my Internetful neighbor has moved away. How I'll miss him! So this weekend I'm off to the Cable Modem Store to buy a cable modem (I tried eBay...
It's a big fat holiday-sized serving of Unconscious Mutterings, because I forgot to do them when I was home....
I'm getting spammed again. When it's a few comments a day, it's okay, but when I get, like 100 in 15 minutes, it's a bit more worrisome. It has happened in the past that I get so many spam comments that it overloads my host's servers and they disable scripts on my account, meaning that Real People can't leave comments. As a temporary fix, I have changed the names of my scripts (this won't affect you at all unless I've done it wrong!), but I am starting to consider moving to inline comments (where you would click on the 'blah...
Dear Nestlé, You so stupid¹! Marshmallows and hot chocolate must be in separate packages, so that when you stir the hot chocolate, you do not disturb the marshmallows. When you disturb the marshmallows, they melt and look like little maggots floating atop the steaming mug of brownness. That is, quite simply, just not right. Not that resemblance to maggots usually prevents me from drinking things. ––––– ¹ NOTHING! NOTHING is in the box!...
Here we are again in December. The end of another year! So let's take a look back at the first and last posts of each month of 2005:...
Dear Meijer's Cashier, Awww, isn't that teenagedboyish of you, to feel that a box of tampons have to go in their own separate bag, away from any of the other products I bought. I assure you, they don't have cooties. It was only mildly amusing and wouldn't have warranted a blog post if it weren't for the fact that the next bag you packed contained a five-pound bag of sugar, a half-gallon of milk, two bags of salad and a package of bagels. I think one of my arms is longer than the other now....
Boy, it's getting to be Sarah's Movie Blog around here. But that's because I have no life. Onward and upward! This week, I checked a passel of DVDs out of the library. Once I got them home, however, I was loath to sit down and watch them because I had managed to check out two Charlie Chaplin movies at the same time. This meant that I could allow myself to check out no new movies until I had managed to stomach those two. So I immediately sat down and watched Tootsie, which I've already seen, and It's a Wonderful Life,...
Everyone on the Internet is discovering this new online face-recognition software, so I thought I would give it a try. Attempt#1: Flattering. She is very pretty and got to make out with Jean-Louis Trintignant when he was young and good-looking. I have had the "tra la la la la la la la la la la la la" theme from Un homme et une femme in my head since I found out that the Intarnets think I look like her. (So far I haven't created any alternate lyrics.) Attempt #2: Not quite so flattering. Vampire? Futuristic space-villain? Escaped prisoner-slash-dogman? Mmmm, there...
Here you go, memely meme-meme....
When I moved here, one of the first things I did was to join the local library. The DVD/video section is just across from the circulation desk and is much more compact than the book section, so the first thing I did was to check out DVDs. They have a list of The American Film Institute's 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time posted on the wall, and this (and the fact that apete's already done it) inspired me to take a shot at watching all 100. It's going to involve watching a lot of westerns, gangster films and war...
I woke up this morning to a lovely story on Morning Edition that went along the lines of: "The morning commute will be slowed on the East Coast this morning, due to snowstorms that killed twenty or so people in the Midwest." What is a bigger news story here? Midwesterners killed or East Coasters inconvenienced? Why are the deaths of Midwesterners simply a footnote to a story about East Coast traffic? Oh America... your coastcentric media coverage is pathetic and disgusting!...
It's been a big week for Sarah Being Outgoing. Whereas I am usually very comfortable staying in my shell and speaking only when spoken to, I've tried to be more active recently in Getting Out of My Comfort Zone. This has included: Going up to a friend of the family after the lecture he gave on campus and introducing myself (whereas I normally would have attended and slunk out and later tried to pass on the word through my mom that I'd attended)Finally calling the rental agency to complain about my leaky toilet¹, which involved a) using the phone and...
I went sofa/loveseat shopping this evening at Ringel's, the furniture MEGAPALOOZA in downtown Hamilton (H to the M to the I-L town, if you want to say that, which I don't). Ringel's is so big that you have to be guided by a salesperson at all times. They'll operate the elevator and take you to one or more of the seven floors, depending on what you're looking for. Then they'll turn on the lights (since the lights are apparently turned off when no one's on the floor) and show you around that floor. Based on a visit to the second...
From all of the hair that's left over in the various nooks and crannies of my dryer, I've been able to recreate an image of what the guy who lived in my apartment before me looked like. As for recreating the guy who lived in my apartment before me himself, that will have to wait until my Jurassic Park-style DNA extraction equipment arrives. On second thought, I don't think I'll recreate him at all. He seems to have been very hairy and - judging from the mail that was left over when I arrived - appears to have had extensive...
Dear Woman Shopping at Target, I don't know how our paths managed to cross so many times while we were shopping at the same store, but I think it's important for you to know that if you're looking for a mug tree - as in something to hang mugs on - you should stop asking Target employees for a tree mug over and over again. They're going to take you to the Christmas section, looking for a mug shaped like a Christmas tree or a mug with Christmas trees on it. After running into you demanding tree mugs from different...
I'd like to dedicate this chapter to Gary Lewis and the Playboys for inspiring me with an idea of how some pieces of my story will fit together. Unfortunately for you guys, the chapter dedicated to you sucks. There are no fascinating, cleverly written passages tonight - just lots of exposition and story-moving-along. Almost 1000 words and I'm up to 7 or 8% of my goal. Not bad, but I'm up too late....
I spent too much time tonight researching what the tie that Colonel Sanders wears is called. The Intarnets tell me that it is either a string tie or a plantation tie and I don't really trust either. So because I wasted about half an hour on this research and was annoyed with myself, I decided that my professor character would be a chubby old German dude rather than a Colonel Sanders rip-off. You know, because they're so similar. To make up for it, I had two characters fall in love over a bucket of KFC. Ain't it romantic, folks? Too...
Blogging is hard! Memes are easy!...
[...] "It's like, 'the sun's out, let's go,' and we're still here," said Lynn Wickum, of San Francisco as she drank a beer at one of the few open Cancun bars. "We feel the frustration building. You wouldn't want to make a scene, but at the same time, you're ready to go home." Many of Cancun's own 500,000 residents have lost nearly everything in flooded or destroyed homes. [...] - Haggard Tourists Battle to Leave Cancun OMGTHEREAREONLYAFEWBARSOPENGETMEHOMETOMYFLATSCREENTV! Having an economy based on tourism just grosses me out. I'm really disturbed that the safety of tourists is so high on Vincente...
What will this day be like? I wonder. What will my future be? I wonder. It could be so exciting, To be out in the world, To be free! My heart should be wildly rejoicing. Oh, what's the matter with me? I've always longed for adventure, To do the things I've never dared. Now here I'm facing adventure Then why am I so scared? - "I Have Confidence", The Sound of Music...
My dad and I set off for Ohio on Friday to make the first of two big furniture-and-boxes runs in the minivan and to sign my lease. The plan was to go down-and-up on Friday, then to go down-and-up again on Sunday, this time with srahmom and apete, and this time leaving me behind. Alas! Some gang aft agleying happened to our best laid plans. We pulled out onto US-23 and almost immediately the "Check Engine" light turned on. So rather than drive eight hours round trip with that on, we turned around and went to the dealership, where it...
I cleaned off my desk last night. To some of you, this may be a throwaway comment about the status of my moving efforts. Those of you who have seen my desk will realize what an undertaking this was. I haven't seen the surface of this desk in over three years. As I got to the bottom levels, I started discovering cards from my college graduation in 2002. This desk was piled in papers, to the point where I felt like it was impossible to tackle. But I have tackled it and wrestled it into some semblance of order, put...
Dear Kid With His Collar Popped Up Having Brunch With His Parents At the Sheraton This Morning, I have recently become aware of the "collar-popping" trend that, it would appear, is taking the nation's young people by storm. Clearly I have gotten old, because I wasn't even aware this was happening until I read an article about a club in D.C. that's banning it. As far as I can tell, it started as some sort of ironic throwback to the 80s and has now become mainstream - sort of like when I was in middle school and said "like" all...
This Lady¹ and Her Husband² came all the way across the ocean just to visit the Great Lakes region. I know, what the heck? Well, the advantage of their crazy ideas is that they got to spend a few days basking in my presence (har) and exploring the sights of scenic Ann Arbor! W00t! Yesterday we walked all the way around the stadium, across the U-M campus and I introduced This Lady and Her Husband to Real American Hamburgers, as opposed to the tripe-and-bits-of-feet that are probably the ingredients of fast food hamburgers. Srahmom and Srahdad also helped to introduce...
Dear WJIM 97.5, Suck it. I don't know what I mean by "it," but I do strongly insist that you suck it immediately. Once upon a time, you were an oldies station - and an oldies station that played a better mix of music than WOMC, now the only oldies station within range of Ann Arbor. (You also had the advantage of not having Tom Ryan on staff, so I could listen to you during the drive-time hours without wanting to punch the radio controls.) Now you have become a cookie-cutter "Contemporary Hits" station, just like every other station on...
In between phone calls to my egg this morning, I got a call from the CIA, asking if I was still interested in a position as Language Officer, which I applied for in a fit of desperation and with a thirst for adventure several months ago. Generally my response to this question would be "yes." In the interest of not counting that chicken while it's still in the egg stage, I'm still lining up interviews with interested universities and all. However, at this point - what with all the raining and pouring and whatnot - I think I can afford...
I'm leeeeeaving on a jet plane. Tuesday's when I'll be back again. For now, put these in your eyes and smoke them! Or don't....
make me some cheesecake brownies! You know what I would really like right now? Cheesecake brownies. you know you want to!...
I recently upgraded Firefox. Nothing drastic - just clicking on the little "Firefox has updates for you to download" button that pops up. However, something went wonky in relation to my firewall and I could open the program but couldn't access any pages with it. A browser is not terrifically useful if you can't access pages, so I found myself using Internet Explorer to try to figure out the problem and to get by until I could figure out where on the network the problem lurked, then how to fix it. BLECH! I always knew that Firefox was better than...
Alas, Talk Like a Pirate Day approacheth (just one day of Holy Pasta Week!). Normally, the arrival of Talk Like a Pirate Day would not be cause for me to make "alas"-type noises, but I will be leaving tomorrow for a three-day visit to Another Ohio Institution. This holiest of days doth fall upon the same day as my interview and - I'm just guessing here - I don't think that my interviewers would be very impressed if my answers to all of their questions involved telling the students/parents/administration to walk the plank....
I just had a dream where I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, AWESOME!. So I think that's enough reason to be blogging it in the middle of the night (before I forget too much of it). Unfortunately, a lot of it seems to hinge on being familiar with Huron High School and the works of Christopher Brookmyre. So... my sister might like it. There was a siege at Huron High School. I'm not sure how we knew it was going on, since we didn't see any of the bad guys. I may have been getting...
I was walking along South University last night when I saw a man dressed as a giant lemon Jelly Belly¹ wearing a chef's hat, presumably advertising for the new(ish) candy store there. I was disappointed with myself because I had considered bringing my camera with me but at the last minute had decided to leave it in the car because I never see anything interesting anyway. I got to the SHEEPDIP and told apete about it. When he was done with his shift there, he walked me back to my car so that I could put my laptop in the...
Ten free associations... and I even manage to fit in a reference to The Sims. I'm surprised I'm not dreaming in Simlish yet....
Unconscious Mutterings, Week 135: In which srah descends into a rage against the things in her mind, especially musicals about drunken unemployed carnies....
I've been watching the coverage of Hurricane Katrina this morning, including reports from newspeople on-site. All I have to say is, Peter Jennings would not have been wearing a t-shirt, shorts and a baseball cap on camera. I don't care how hot it is - I don't care what he changed into when he wasn't on camera - Peter Jennings would have been there on location in a button-down shirt. I expect a certain level of dignity from my television journalists, thankyouverymuch, and no one seems to be delivering it anymore....
I never plan ahead and can never remember these things. So since I'm thinking of it now: I have to plan out my day on Friday and I thought I remembered seeing a list compiled somewhere of the places in Ann Arbor/Ypsi where you can get free birthday food/services. Any suggestions as to where I can find the list or your own favorite birthday freebies?...
There are an awful lot of people out there (myself included) who wasted their formative years learning more than anyone needed to know about Kid-Kits, silly-billy-goo-goos, and Jenny Prezzioso's family situation. Fortunately, today some of those people have put their knowledge to good use in the form of Baby-sitters Club fan fiction. There is, frighteningly enough, lots of serious BSC fan fiction out there, where people are so enamoured with the series that they had to continue their fabulous adventures (including the never-ending repetition of the character introductions, from Kristy's MILLIONAIRE!!!!11oneone stepfather to Claudia's almond eyes and perfect complexion to...
I went to the mall last night to shop for a dress for a wedding this weekend, a top to wear under my suits, navy blue shoes, a navy purse and a black purse. But mostly the dress. The problem was, I couldn't concentrate on one thing, because I had all these other secondary purchases that I wanted to make as well. So I had to visit every store and every department for anything that I might be interested in buying. As my time at the mall went on, it started to fill up with teenaged girls in skimpy tank...
I forgot to do the Obfuscation this year. :( But here are some free associations....
I went to the store recently to buy deodorant and discovered that Secret has introduced a few new flavors scents with inspiring names like "Optimism" and "Genuine". Looking over my options, I decided to try one out and hope that it really would encourage me in my job search, bolstering up a quality that I consider myself to be lacking. But I have found that I do not like the smell of "Ambition" in the morning. It smells like... citrus and baby powder. They're popular deodorant scents, but weird together. Who wants to diaper a grapefruit?...
Before I go to bed tonight, I want to record the dream I had last night: I was staying in a cabin in the woods with my very large family. I went off somewhere (maybe to the mall, because part of my dream took place at the mall but I'm not sure where that was) and when I came back, I had to cross a river to get back to the cabin. I came to the bridge and it was covered with these savage orange raccoons. I decided to go to the next bridge, but the raccoons were there, too....
Alas, I was not able to write down my thoughts as I went along for this portion of the trip. This is why I like public transportation! But here are my thoughts as I remember them: Right, let's take a look at this here TripTik. First step: Turn northeast onto... wait, northeast? Which way's northeast? I don't have a freaking northeast turn signal, thank you, AAA. I am not a Boy Scout. I am not that kid in my 6th grade class who always carried a compass in school.AAAAAAAAAAAAH! Rental car! Rental car! Must not smash! Must not drive too...
Would you like to know more than you ever needed to know about waste management in space? Of course you wouldn't. Neither did I. But curiosity got the best of me, and I hope it will get the best of you, too, so that we can suffer together. [via Abroad at home]...
It's a tiny, mini, baby plane! It's a freaking biplane! I think Charles Lindbergh flew this very plane! THIS PLANE HAS PROPELLERS! I prefer the mystery of the big planes with those whirly enginey things that people are always getting sucked into in movies. I don't know how those work or what they are exactly. I know how a propeller works, and that scares me!The flight attendant has just informed us that we are in a Saab 340. This Saab is only slightly bigger than the ones on the road. I wonder how it handles on ice."... In the emergency,...
Yes, it's that time of year again! "On Friday, August 12 you’ll post 3 stories. * Two false and one true or * Two true and one false Readers have to pick the false story(ies), leaving their guess in the comments. (Make sure you let them know which version of the game you’re playing.) On Monday, Ausgut 15 you’ll post the correct response. The stories can be as crazy as you want them to be. But you want to make them all believable enough that the reader has to give the game a little thought." I played in 2003 and...
One Little Monkey, sittin' in her blog. She fell off and went ker-plog. You may remember my friend Cheryl from such guest posts as Soolaimon, Untitled, "I Have One Thing to Say...Sashay, Shantay!" and Pizza and pop. Well, this here post is to tell you that Cheryl's got her own blog at One Little Monkey and that if you know what's good for you, you'll have a look-see and encourage her to write more than one post! It's been a crazy year for my meatspace friends getting into blogging and I hope it continues! Thank ye kindly....
My friends and I often play a game called "I'm Going To Buy This For You." This game can be played in a variety of locations; I remember playing it in anything from a clothing store to a china/gift shop to an art museum. It consists of inflicting the worst possible destiny on your friends, and therefore appeals to me and my friends. We have close, loving relationships in which we always wish the best for each other, so if we see something like a rainbow-striped sweater with a huge cartoon skunk on it, we kindly offer to purchase it...
I finally fixed that problem where you can't tab through the form in my comments box. It's only taken a little over two years! Hooray for me! I knew it would be easy but I never really got around to it. Also, I have a redesign scheming in my little brain. It would use CSS more smartly and efficiently (because I didn't really know what I was doing the first time I used it - not that I do now). Unfortunately, there are so many things to fiddle with and so many more important work- and job-search-related things to do,...
I dreamt last night that I was Inspector Rebus, as played by John Hannah. Someone was after DS Clarke and myself so there were a lot of exciting car chases and things. We got to what was apparently Siobhan's house and ran inside, barely locking the door behind us before our pursuers reached it. Siobhan decided that we should spray through the cracks in the door with a spray bottle filled with water, because that's what they used to do to her dog. Apparently the guy ran away and then Jamie Bell (who was - okay, I'll spoil it -...
I went to Borders last night with Alfie to pick up her reserved copy of the book. It was a bit of a zoo. When we picked up Order of the Phoenix at Waldenbooks, we stood in a line of about thirty people, picked up the book and were probably home by 12:30. At Borders this year, we were given a number somewhere in the 500s and everyone milled around until midnight, which was when they finally started lining people up by number. We were home by about 1:45. Zonk. Interesting, though: When we bought Order of the Phoenix, the...
To follow up on a previous post: From the delivery reports so far, it looks like all of the deliveries are being made by celebrities who have something to do with what's being delivered. This is fair - if Dale Jarrett showed up on my doorstep, I believe my exact reaction would be, "Hey.... Guy in a Jumpsuit.... It's really amazing to actually meet you in person, Guy in a Jumpsuit. I'm a big fan of... whatever it is you do. Oh well. At least I got my Harry Potter book. Bye." But in something I read about the promotion,...
I didn't play during the school year. I knew that I tend to obsess and that things would get out of control and I just didn't have the time. When I graduated, I looked forward to being able to play again, but my Simming got a little out of control a few weeks ago. I was spending entire days in my pyjamas and staying up until all hours of the night manipulating my fake people's fake lives, and I wasn't doing anything valuable with my real life. There was a period where I suddenly realized I hadn't applied for a...
Vendredi, enfin! Cette Semaine de Langues a été très populaire et je vous remercie d'avoir participé: AnP, Armin, Christina, Elemmaciltur, In Actual Fact, J, Jamie, Jen, Katie, Marisa, Noor, Patricia, Renee, Scott et Stuart. (Écrivez-moi si j'ai oublié quelqu'un!) Et je voudrais remercier aussi quelqu'un qui m'a beaucoup aidé et m'a soutenu cette semaine: [Read the extended entry for English translation; click the Language Week icon for an explanation]...
J'ai passé toute la journée à regarder les nouvelles de Londres à la télé (même s'il n'y avait pas vraiment de nouvelles, parce que rien n'a changé depuis le matin londonien!) et le résultat, c'est que j'ai oublié d'écrire l'article de jeudi. Alors le voilà, très tôt vendredi matin. Comme j'ai dit hier, je suis allée à la bibliothèque pour chercher un dictionnaire espagnol-anglais. Ce que je n'ai pas dit, c'est lorsque j'étais là, devant les livres et les cassettes de langues étrangères, j'ai pris le décision d'étudier une autre langue. J'ai tenté d'apprendre des langues plusieurs fois dans ma...
In honor of Language Week, I bring you the web-archived version of my absolutely favorite Onion article ever: I Bet I Can Speak Spanish...
Bueno. ¡Mi español es aun peor que mi francés, entonces perdonenme, por favor! Hoy día fui a la biblioteca para buscar un diccionario español-inglés. Hace dos años que perdí mi mismo diccionario. ¡Es difícil, escribir en español con diccionario, porque no sé buscar las palabras! Empezé a aprender el español cuando estaba en Francia por primera vez y compré un libro para "Apprendre l'espagnol en 30 leçons" o algo como eso. Así, aprendí un poco de español en Francia. Después, regresé en los Estados Unidos y estudié el español en la universidad durante un año. ¡Después, regresé en Francia y...
Punaise, que je suis nulle! Je viens de decouvrir que j'avais supprimé le fil RSS de Kim de mon agrégateur sans me rendre compte. Ça explique, un peu, pourquoi je n'ai pas eu de nouvelles de sa part depuis quelques semaines (je dépend des fils RSS!). Craints pas, cherie! Je t'ai rajouté et j'ai ajouté le fil de from rooster to donkey en plus. Alors, c'est assez difficile de bloguer tous les jours en anglais et c'est même plus difficile en langue étrangère. Mais aujourd'hui c'est Kim qui est mon sauveur (ma sauveuse?), parce qu'elle m'a transmis une mème en...
I haven't done this in a while, but it was calling to me... Would you rather: be chased by a mob of angry squirrels OR a mob of angry protestors? Man can make no laws to control the actions of squirrels, grasshoppers. If the two groups wanted to do bloody murder unto me, the squirrels would go ahead and do it, whereas the humans would have to take into consideration things like laws and morals.take a shower every hour OR once every month? It would be like ye olde dayes. I would slather myself in perfumèd oils: frankincense, myrrh and...
(Voilà le début de la Semaine des Langues chez srah blah blah. Je vois qu'il y a, déjà, beaucoup plus de participants que la dernière fois et je vous remercie! Parmi ces participants: Anyhoo, Armin, christina, Elemmaciltur, in actual fact, J, Jamie, katie, Marisa, patricia, Renee et Stuart) Alors, aujourd'hui on est le 4 juillet, la fête nationale des États-Unis. Notre famille vient de visionner 1776, l'un de nos films préférés, et ce qui est devenu une activité traditionnelle pour fêter le 4 juillet chez nous. L'été dernière j'étais en France et j'ai passé la plupart de notre fête nationale...
Beware the Snail of Death, all ye who live in that pink building! OBEY MY SNAIL! [via Here Be Subtlety]...
Dear Converse, I think you owe me some free shoes. Comfortable and fashionable ones, just like all of the shoes in your line! And so affordable! Everyone should own at least... oh, six pairs I think. SRAH [thanks to Mr B****** for the suggestion]...
It's that time of year again... LANGUAGE WEEK III July 4 - 8, 2005 There are rules!: Blog in a language that you don't usually blog in. You don't have to blog a lot if you don't want to - a few sentences will do, as long as you continue, once a day, through the week (or at least Monday to Friday). You can blog in one foreign language for five days, you can blog in five different languages or you can find some medium between the two. What the hell. If you only want to blog in Swedish once...
I feel like Dr Paul Armstrong! You know what this survey could mean to science? It could mean actual advances in the field of science! Now that I'm a scientist, though, I just wish, as a scientist, that I could appreciate more things like cabins... bicycles... [via misanthropic tendencies and Diner Bitch]...
Order your copy today!ERRORYou do not have Javascript enabled.Until the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!Hogwartsmagic.com Thanks to Katie, mine shall be delivered to my very own front door! At last, in nineteen days, there will finally be something blogworthy in my life!...
Hey, thar be bloggage on this front page. And here be a little more. These here associations is free....
Please tie your shoes, because you are going to want to sprint away as far as you can get from me and my blog. You may then wish to shower in order to cleanse yourself and perhaps to rinse out your eyes in order to recover from the horror which I am about to type: This summer, I have really gotten into reading Anne of Green Gables fan fiction. Oh my god. I actually wrote it down. In general, I find that fan fiction is rubbish. The characters do things they never would have done under the original author's power,...
Ever since Cari left, there's no one around to organize social events. Don't look at me - I have all this important stuff to do... like... um... encourage my Sims to socialize. Wait... So luckily a fête happy hour was organized for last night. But unluckily, a basketball game was also scheduled for last night. Basketball and I have never quite seen eye-to-eye but we managed to coexist civilly - the occasional biting remarks but usually it was okay to take us out in public together. But our truce lasts no longer! The bar was full of people watching the...
I told myself that after Memorial Day, I would let up on my hardcore country-wide search for career-related study abroad advising jobs and start just looking for jobs. To earn money. Instead, after Memorial Day, I let up on the hardcore search and didn't look for anything at all and just played The Sims all day. And I couldn't blog because I didn't do anything but play The Sims all day. I had a phone interview a week and a half ago. It's a great fit and I kind of have my heart set on it, so that hasn't encouraged...
I took about 72 pictures last night at Cari and Rebecca's going-away party, then something went weird and I started getting a "Memory Card Error" message. Cari took the memory card home with her to see if it was a problem with the way the camera was reading it, but she couldn't get it to work on its own, either. Then I think I had a dream where we got it to work. Unfortunately, it was a very vivid dream so it feels like it really happened. I keep convincing myself that I haven't lost all of those pictures and...
What kind of nerd am I? Here it is, May 23 and I haven't yet blogged about Star Wars Episode III. Well, I was having trouble organizing my thoughts into cohesive sentences, so instead I bring you some bullet points, hidden in the extended entry so as not to spoil things for those of you who ain't seen it yet....
I have just discovered that I am deathly afraid of bees! Oh boy, another phobia/neurosis to add to the list! There is a member of the bee family in my office. I always lump anything together that is black and yellow and has a stinger attached to it as a "bee" but I think this one may be a hornet. I am basing this on the fact that when it stopped flying around and I got a look at it, it looked exactly like this*, only slightly less cartoonish. I've never been stung by a "bee" and my hypochondria and...
On the way to work today, I stopped to get an iced chai. I need some kind of beverage to keep me awake in the morning and iced chai is my new kick. "Whole milk or skim?" the counterperson asked me. I replied that I wanted whole milk and both of the people working there cheered. Apparently skim is the popular choice, so they get really excited when someone chooses the other. I said, "Life's too short to drink skim milk" and they agreed. We bantered some more over my newly-acquired punch card and now we are Best Friends. I...
I cut through the Chemistry building today on my way out of work. As I walked through the building I realized my face was wet because my tear ducts had frozen up and tears were now melting all over my face. Weather, it is May 12. This service is unacceptable. I would like to talk to your manager and I will have you know that I will not be leaving a tip....
I kicked off my shoes, and felt the good earth beneath my feet I loosened my tie, and felt what it feels like to breathe I found the secret to life I took some time for living I took off my watch, and found I had all the time in the world I opened up my arms, so I could hold life like a beautiful girl I laid down all of my hang-ups forever I looked around, and saw what sweet things can be found Simply by taking some time for living Grooving on little things life is giving From...
Several weeks ago, Apete told me that he was addicted to Coke and wanted to quit. So I became his personal watchdog and yelled at him whenever I saw him with some. Believe it or not, yelling is not an effective motivational tool. I think I learned this in my psychology class. Or perhaps that was electric shock. No wait, electric shocks are always good. He was not very committed to the whole quitting thing until I made it into a personal challenge - like Let's see how long you can go without Coke. I decided that I would be...
"If you go to Cleveland, you'd probably see a million of me walking around." - Scott Savol, American Idol I have a new least favorite mental image. I may have nightmares tonight. (P.S. Constantine, we are not having fun yet. Nor were we at any point during that song you sang.)...
Thanks to some collaboration between the US Postal Service and the Spanish post office, my Great International Secret Blog Exchange package has finally arrived to its recipient! The chocolate chip cookies I baked are now, unfortunately, at least a month and a half old and probably crumbled to bits. So that's what that was supposed to be! Enjoy!...
I would like to preface this by saying that for a person who has apparently lived in like a billion places, I don't feel like I've lived in a lot of different places. :( These questions are from Sarah: 1. dude. you've lived in like a billion places. which one was the easiest to live in, and why? Home is always easiest. There's free laundry and people make me dinner! That said, it's not always easy to live at home and this baby bird does look forward to fleeing the nest (or being shoved out by the Mama and Papa...
I had a dream last night where I was on a car trip with Cheryl, Robin and Harini and we stopped to get ice cream at this roadside stand. I went to the bathroom, but it had a big window into the stall, which looked right out onto the ice cream line. So people could see in! My grandma was there too and she was making fun of me. Then I was back in Vichy and ran into two of my hôtellerie students, who were now selling electronics. I was disappointed that they hadn't gone very far in hôtellerie but...
These questions are from Jamelah: 1. Why do you like Neil Diamond so much? (Not that this needs justifying, or anything, because, well, Neil, but yeah, why?) Neil Diamond is the antithesis of cool, which makes him so much cooler. I am naturally contumacious and hate to go with the crowd so if everybody else is listening to 50 Cent, I will be listening to Neil Diamond, goddammit! My love for TEH NEIL!!!1oneone really began in the summer of 2003 when we went on a road trip in Cheryl's parents' van and her dad's 3-CD Neil Diamond set was almost...
Isidore is fine. I borrowed Mr B******'s power cord and powered him up and now he seems to be running correctly. So the problem, it seems, is all in some part of the chargey thing. No fear of surges or other brain damage from his time in a coma. Whew. Update: Well, I've now discovered that he won't run on battery power and will only work when directly plugged into the wall. Boo hoo. I don't know if he just needs a new battery or if it's something worse than that, but... well, I'm not as worried as I once...
My baby is sick. My baby is sick. My baby is sick. What am I going to do? I got home from the David Sedaris thing (was it a lecture? Was it a reading? What was it? It was a "thing."), sat down in front of Isidore to blog and... nothing. I pushed the power button and nothing happened. I started to panic and push it more often and hold it down and anything I could think of that might make him spring back to life. Spring he did not. "Maybe his battery is dead?" I speculated to my parents....
Dear David (since I'm all about the open letters this week), IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou and I kinda want to be you. Your loving gnome, SRAH...
Dear Michigan Daily, I have not yet read today's front-page article, Computer breeches worry experts, but I would like to let you know that computer breeches worry me too. I am not an expert in the domain of computers or pants, but it seems to me that these are two things that you do not want to combine. Suppose you sit in something wet and short-circuit yourself! Apparently these are computer security breeches, though, so perhaps the world of fashion technology has taken these kinds of things into consideration. I am still worried. And so are the experts. [thanks to...
Dear iTunes Music Store, You disappoint me, dear. Really, you do. I expect you to meet all of my music needs and, well, okay, I have to admit that sometimes you come through for me. Thank you for: the Vincent Delerm song, which would have been hard to find in the US if it weren't for you.Dido's White Flag, which was an impulse buy that came at a time when I needed that sort of sentiment. De-Phazz's Jazz Music, which I heard as Muzak at The Limited, asked the manager what it was, she went digging through things in the...
As if accounts at Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal and my real blog weren't enough, BEHOLD! Here is srah's Yahoo! 360° account! (Yahoo! 360° is Yahoo!'s attempt to make a sort of all-in-one online presence, with blogs, photos, reviews and social networking system all tied together.) First of all, I really don't think it's a good idea to give your Internet product a name with a character that's not on the keyboard. Second, I don't have high hopes for this blog thing (not just for me - I think it's pretty much a given that I'm not going to be using this...
I love this strange freedom that radio stations have to change formats and target demographics suddenly and without warning. You don't really see that anywhere else. Keds doesn't wake up one day and decide it's going to shift its focus from soccer moms to young urban males.* Earlier this week, WDRQ (local hip-hop/top 40 station) changed format and became Doug FM. Usually when you say a station has changed format, it really just means that they've changed their music selection and target audience. In this case, they really have changed the format of the station. Now it's basically a huge...
In addition to my Dharma Bums (the name of this drink probably bothers me most because I know someone named Dharma and don't really want to think about her bum), I bought myself a blueberry scone. Because, remember, the whole point was to Put Food In Me, not to Put Beverage In Me. Here is a rule of thumb: real blueberries are good. Fakety fake-ass blueberries of fakery are not good. What are these things? They ain't blueberries, that's for sure. Real blueberries have a nice tartness to them and a crisp juiciness about them that is very pleasurable*. These...
I am a sports fiend! As some of you may have followed and others of you may have waited with baited breath* to learn, if I had been involved in some kind of NCAA basketball pool (which I WASN'T) I would have come in last place among the other people NOT participating in said IMAGINARY pool and won back the five dollars that I DIDN'T illegally bet on the outcome of the tournament. Victory! Sweet sweet breaking even!** On the heels of this triumph comes my new foray into the world of sports wagering: Fantasy Baseball. Fantasy Baseball, unlike NCAA...
Right. Haven't blogged in a while, so I guess I'd best do so before I lose the touch. I'm in a foul, cranky mood today, which I thought might be improved by Putting Food In Me*. I had some extra time, so I went to Amer's on the way to work. While waiting in line, I actually looked at the menu instead of mindlessly ordering a chai as I usually do. They had something called Dharma Bums, which I'm almost positive also exists at the Amer's on Church Street, but with a different name. It's half hot milk, half Earl...
Here is the extent of my knowledge/made-up facts about basketball: Tall people play it. James Naismith invented it. He was Canadian. Converse used to have contracts to shoe the NBA. Now they just shoe ninjas. Here is the extent of my knowledge about the current state of college basketball: Division I college athletes are spoiled. Oh, and, um, I think Duke might be good. You always hear about them, don't you? So, of course, it follows that I am not (if the NCAA asks) entering a NCAA basketball pool. Yes, that's it. Not entering. Go away, nice NCAA. But I...
I'm not a regular reader of Lasadh, but I liked the questions......
In French, herbal tea is a tisane, whereas real tea is thé. I like that they have two different words for it, because herbal tea is for suckahs and when you're really desperate. It seems like by having two words, there would be less confusion and you could more easily express the idea that you want REAL TEA as opposed to herbal. Unfortunately, in my experience it doesn't make things any easier because a tisane is usually still considered a kind of thé. I don't know what my point was... probably something about Sapir/Whorf and cultural understanding across languages. But...
Srahfamily sat around the TV this evening and sacrificed our souls and our eyes through fifteen minutes of The O.C. in order to catch the Star Wars: Episode III (I've forgotten the title of this piece of garbage) trailer. From what I can tell, this episode in the series is going to be a tale of disappointment. Obi-Wan's disappointment that Anakin is not The Chosen One Who Will Bring Balance To The Force. Anakin's disappointment that he's not made a Jedi Master. Samuel L. Jackson's disappointment that he's gonna die. And, of course, last but not least, your disappointment and...
A package of enough American goodies to make any European sick for a month is now winging its way off to Spain as I pray that nothing breaks, spills or melts on the trip. This package has the potential to be absolutely disgusting if something goes wrong in transit. Now that my Great International Secret Blog Exchange package is sent, I am at liberty to open the one I received! I wouldn't allow myself to open it until I had sent mine off, in order to keep myself from procrastinating any more than was absolutely necessary to keep me from...
I spent half an hour sitting at a computer in the Undergrad Library this afternoon and trying to manage my piles of email. Committee-organized events may just kill me. I was sidetracked from what was supposed to be a quick blogging session about being short and ended up staying in the library for about half an hour, meaning that I was out longer than I'd paid for parking and I had a parking ticket. Parking tickets in Ann Arbor are $10 but they're $6 if you pay it within one business day. So I drove off to City Hall, parked...
We planned to leave at 9am, so I set my alarm for 7. I would have plenty of time to get myself ready and to repack all of my bags before retrieving the car from the parking garage. Then I woke up at 6:15. By 6:30, I was wide awake with my eyes wide open, willing myself to go back to sleep. Alas, it was not to be, so I got up and puttered around in my suitcase until I could allow myself to go and shower. Due to being wide awake, the morning's preparations went very quickly and by...
We had another jam-packed day at work today. I got some work in until about lunchtime, then I expected to have some more time to look into Access queries and doing a writeup about them. Alas, it was not to be. My report had to leave off at "How to add a new field," which I hope will be valuable. My project never had a really clear definition, which was frustrating at times but rather liberating because I didn't have a set goal. So I just worked and got done what I got done. This is great for a second-year...
A woman approaches me at the table in the library where I am working. "I want to get on page." "Excuse me?" "You work here?" "I... I... do. I guess." "I want to get on page. You help me?" She gestures to the area where she's working. "I... you should probably ask over there instead." I gesture to the reference desk. "You work here? You help me. Come here, I want to get on page." A panicked look, I'm sure, crosses my face. I kinda work here, but I don't know anything about the collection! She looks like she's going...
When I see horse-drawn carriages in New York, something in me makes me want to run up to the horses and tell them that the end of their enslavement draws near. There is no Sarah - only Zuul. (Yes, I am doing that thing again where everything I see in New York City reminds me of some movie.) When I came to work this morning, there was a gaggle of Franciscan friars waiting to go through security at the same time I was. Only one of them had on monk-style robes - the rest were in jeans and sweatshirts -...
All of the Alternative Spring Break reports I've read about *Unidentified International Organization* talk endlessly about the cafeteria. I had built up an image in my mind of a huge room with 100-foot ceilings and marble everywhere, where hairnetted lunch-ladies surlily glop filet mignon and lobster onto your plate. The huge ceilings are, instead, in the part of the library where I'm working. But the cafeteria is pretty spectacular too. I haven't had my tour, but it's my favorite thing about *Unidentified International Organization* so far. The cafeteria looks out over the river and the view is just as spectacular...
Of course I'm cleaning my room. Everybody my age cleans their room. It's the coolest! You ain't cool unless you clean your room. If cleaning your room makes you cool, consider me Miles Davis! Hmmm. No, seriously, cleaning your room is cool. I just found fi' dolla'. And then sat down to blog about it and did a lot of research into misquoting Billy Madison and completely killed my cleaning frenzy. WAY TO GO, SRAH....
I learned today that Oprah Winfrey got her ears pierced for the first time this week, at age 51. I've always been conflicted about ear piercing, myself. Pros: I think earrings look nice and I think I would look nice with earrings. Robin always tells me that I should get my ears pierced because I can't wear most other jewelry. And that way I can get hypothetical future boyfriends to buy me jewelry. Ahem. Cons: I kind of enjoy being the only mutant freaktard who doesn't have pierced ears. I bask in attention. :-\ I'm afraid of infection! I'm not...
"Currently, the main attraction is a parlor game in which users try to guess the ages of other users based on a photograph." I'm in there, somewhere, looking all of 16 years old: ageproject [via Glovebox Sandwiches]...
Via Noor comes the information that famous blog-type-person Jason Kottke is quitting his job to blog full-time. He says: "I'm attempting to revisit the idea of arts patronage in the context of the internet. Patrons of the arts have typically been wealthy individuals, well-heeled foundations, or corporations. As we've seen in many contexts, the net allows individuals from geographically dispersed locations to aggregate themselves for any number of reasons. So, when you've got a group of people who are interested in a particular artist, writer, etc., they should be able to mobilize over the internet and support that person directly...
Vonce again eet eez time for ze unconscious mutterings. Vonce again vee shall delve deep into ze subconscious of ze srah for ze free azzociations....
There is an international internship program conducting interviews at my office this week. Most of the interviews are carried out in the language of the internship and I sat in on one, so now the director of the program keeps chattering away at me in French whenever he sees me. I've been thinking in French and speaking French to myself today. French is like a drug and I'm hooked on it again. I love language because you can use it from day one. There is nothing useless in language** so there's nothing for me to get bored with. There's nothing...
What does my kitchen have to do with anything??? Well anyway, this is a music meme that's been going around and Jamie tagged me, so I picked and chose some questions from various versions of the meme. Here goes: 1. Total amount of music files on your computer: 2718 files, which translates to more than 7 days of music. What the hell am I going to do with 7 days of music??? 2. The last CD you bought was: I made my mom buy the Return of the Jedi soundtrack. 3. What was the last song you listened to before...
My mom and I are watching Gone With the Wind and it has been recognized that I am Scarlett O'Hara Minus Southern Accent. Well, what's the mattuh with preferrin' to eat barbecue instead of talking about some silly war, anyway? I do declare! I don't normally approve of hitting slaves, but for Prissy's sake, I'll make an exception. I'm proud of Scarlett for only verbally abusing Melanie Hamilton-Wilkes behind her back so far. I would have punched her by now, because SERIOUSLY, where did Ashley dig up this sappy, whispering wet blanket? Well, I have a long life of adventure...
The bane of my job-applying existence this far has been the dreaded Cover Letter. As much emphasis as is put on resumés, I think we all know that all the important stuff goes in the Cover Letter. The Cover Letter is where it's at. The Cover Letter is what makes or breaks the deal. And so I have been terribly frightened* of the Cover Letter. This morning I woke up and pried my eyes open, fired up Isidore (as I am wont to do first thing in the morning) and decided to read postings from the study-abroad listserv I joined...
Last night in my Stephen M. Ross Business School of Business and Hey This Guy Ross Gave Us A Crapload Of Money class, we were talking about employee satisfaction, morale and rewards. Some of the things in our reading were just embarassingly stupid, like suggesting that you should go to clown college because people like managers with a sense of humour (CLOWNS ARE NOT FUNNY) or give out buttons that say "Caught caring!" when an employee does something thoughtful. I wanted to throw up because it seems so forced - like David Brent trying too hard to be the cool,...
Sell by: February 9, 2005 Use by: February 9, 2005 Can you taste that? That's the taste of no preservatives, just pure unadulterated lard. And a little sugar. And some flour to hold it together. All stuffed with jelly. This is the beauty of the paczek. It is indeed a fine time of year to live in Michigan. This is our reward for December and January and that of winter that is yet to come. Handily, it also serves as insulation. My favorite flavor of pączki? Red....
"Are you an ex-pat who's missing goodies from home? Always wanted knick-knacks from another country but haven't managed to get there yet? Want to expand your horizons and meet people from around the world? Here's your chance!" Vivi and Tracy are running The Great International Secret Blog Exchange. Sign-ups are going on until this Thursday, February 10. Send a care package from your part of the world!...
Who are you cheering for? I'm rooting for FedEx myself. Ah, that Burt Reynolds! Oh... there's a football game on? Well, if I have to pick a team, I'll cheer for Philadelphia. I base this decision on absolutely no knowledge of professional football and the conviction that there's something creepy about Tom Brady. Paul McCartney's halftime show is making me uncomfortable. I don't know what it is, but I feel very uneasy and on edge. It's like watching someone you know on stage - you want them to do very well, but there's this terrifying feeling that they will fail...
It's time for the weekly free associations! And for sleeping! Night night....
For some reason, channel 54 is coming in clearly today. Channel 54 is the French-language CBC station from Ontario that usually comes in as fuzzy French playing over a field of snow. Today, for some reason, the picture is visible and the sound is audible. Today, it's watchable. And watchèd, dear readers. And watchèd. Hooray! Television! In French! Sometimes we get Canadian public television in French, but the advantage of CBC is that there are commercials! In French! My dad and I have been sitting here, trying to decipher the news for about an hour. The only problem is... Canadian...
The more I listen to other people's music, the more I wonder what I was thinking when I assembled my CD. Who wants all of my musicals, sappy romantic hokum and silliness? Sigh. Oh well, I'm sure someone will appreciate something on there! I also realize that I know absolutely nothing about music. I thought my mix was kind of unusual and "out there" but now I'm realizing it's awfully mainstream, with a touch of the insane. Sigh. I suppose it reflects my personality. Disc 1 When I got this disc, I popped it in, copied all the files into...
Speaking of grammar mistakes, here's one I heard confused today. It wasn't the kind of thing that drives me insane, but I heard it and thought, 'That doesn't sound quite right. What did she mean to say?' gambit - n. 1. An opening in chess in which a minor piece, or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position. 2. A maneuver, stratagem, or ploy, especially one used at an initial stage. 3. A remark intended to open a conversation. gamut - n. 1. A complete range or extent: a face that expressed a gamut of...
Can you sing? Do you know someone who can sing? I can't think of anyone I know who can sing well enough that I would encourage them to try out for American Idol on national television. Why do these people's friends and family allow them to do this? Why do all of the contestants say, "Everyone I know says I sing really well?" Does everyone they know hate them? Being rejected is like a double-whammy: You suck, and everyone you know has just set you up to make a fool of yourself....
"The most memorable women in black only let us remember the dress. You don't recall the shoes, the bag or even the men they were with particularly. It all comes back to the dress." I just read an article on how to wear (and how not to wear) a little black dress. And I loved it and I blogged it so that you can read it and love it too. And also... I bought a copy of Cosmo this week. But in my defense, it was for an article about things women do that hold them back professionally and-- Oh,...
Hey, I've been Micheled! I'm a celebrity for a day! I found my clue in the list, but I was afraid that even I wouldn't be able to recognize myself. I find the Scavenger Hunt impossibly hard myself so I'm not going to help you, other than to suggest that you might want to look in the leftwardly direction of the page for some assistance. Otherwise, welcome. Please have a poke around....
My head hurts. I've just realized that I can't remember drinking any tea since Sunday. I remember boiling the water several times, but I never got to the stage of making or drinking the tea. So this headache may be from withdrawal. I am treating it now. Because of my headache, I have skipped out on a presentation I was going to go to at the Business School. So I put on my Business Casual Grown Up costume for nothing. Bah! Well, I'll have fun looking like a Business Casual Grown Up Laying Around The House And Moaning About Her...
Although I've lived almost all of my life in Michigan, I've found that outside sources have snuck in and affected my language. Jason blogged recently about standardizing his English when speaking with English-speakers from around the world. While international English speakers have definitely affected my language, I've even been influenced to standardize my American English somewhat from my native Michigander. I've only just realized that I am now just as likely (or perhaps even more likely) to call a sweet, carbonated beverage a "soda" rather than a "pop" just because I've been around enough people who look at me funny,...
Is it acceptable in English to use plurals like bureaux, milieux and beaux? I love spelling things with X's but I don't know if it's right in English. In the cover letter I wrote yesterday, I wanted to write something about the various milieux in which I had reference experience. I couldn't decide if I was allowed to spell it milieux or if I had to go for the very BOR-ing and wrong-looking 'milieus' so I just said 'environments.' It was probably for the best anyway. No sense in being pretentious in a cover letter - I need to trick...
I had a chuckle this afternoon at those false-memory jokers making up events and actually believing that they'd happened. Ha ha! Fools! This evening, I went to another class, which deals with human behavior in organizations. We talked about the problems in management and communication that led to the Challenger explosion in 1986. I've known for years that the Challenger exploded in 1986. 1986 is the year I was 6 years old and in first grade. I remember sitting in my first grade classroom and hearing about the Challenger explosion. Except, to my horror, the video we watched revealed that...
Driving to Mr B------'s movie premiere on Saturday night, I saw a brownish chunk of snow in the middle of the road. It was a brownish chunk of snow like all other brownish chunks of snow that ride around and around on tires, get stuck in wheel-wells and eventually fall off. I slowed down a little to go around the curve and was very glad that I had done so when the chunk of brown snow suddenly hopped forward. I stopped the car and the chunk hopped again. I inched forward behind the little tiny bunny, who just hopped down...
I'm a lot better at complaining about things than admiring them. So while I managed four paragraphs on Troy, here are some good movies I've seen recently and said nothing about: The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra: I came across this at the video rental store on New Year's Eve. Justin had mentioned it months (maybe years?) ago and I'd watched the trailer and looked forward to seeing it. So I rented it and showed it at our Tuesday movie night the next week. It was a masterpiece! Aliens, mutants, a sarcastic talking skeleton, people drinking out of candle holders, a...
Yea verily: Noor did call upon the SI community to create mp3 mix CDs for to swap with one's neighbors. And when this call didst go out, there was a thunderous response, necessitating the burnage of two copies each. And all was well. Until one day when the swap did start, and young Sarah did find herself buried alive in mp3s. This is her tale, to be chronicled weekly until April or until she does die from the overdose of mp3s. Other such tales can be found herein: Crowboy's Blog Buried in the Noise (aptly titled, good sir) dorkyspice (And...
I dreamt last night that MaTT had a new background image on his website and I had to take him to Vichy to convince him that the image was a photograph of the high school I worked in. While I was at the school, I got walked in on in the bathroom by almost all of my former students as well as some students I didn't have, I ran into a certain purple-hating SI professor, who apparently had an office in the school and came over to Vichy for 3 days every week even though she didn't actually teach there...
Srahfamily ventured to Detroit today for the North American International Auto Show (and more importantly, to Greektown for lunch!) The first cars we saw upon entering were shaped sort of like those creatures on Naboo that stupid retarded Anakin goes stupid retarded riding - the ones with the huge butts that taper down to tiny heads. What is with that trend in car design? I walked past an Audi and looked it over. The nose was pretty huge and I couldn't decide if I liked it or not, so I came around to the side and checked out the price...
A vague desire to free associate is the fire in the eyes of this chick, whose sickness is Unconscious Mutterings. Uh... yeah....
In a class I attended last week, the teacher asked who uses Firefox. A multitude of hands were raised, so he asked instead who uses Internet Explorer. No one raised their hand. Are you still using Internet Explorer? I have to switch over to it occasionally to use Flash 7, which doesn't seem to upgrade correctly on Firefox but the only other advantage I can think of is that this page was designed back in the IE days and doesn't look quite right in Firefox. Don't worry, my children. I release you. Go forth and be one with the Firefox....
In one of the classes I'm considering for this semester, we looked today at Cirque de Soleil's business model. As this is technically an undergraduate class, we began with ten minutes of a Cirque de Soleil video. After ten minutes, the professor stopped and said, "Who would pay $100 to continue watching?" referring to Cirque de Soleil's ticket prices. I would have paid $100 to stop watching. I know everyone's in love with Cirque de Soleil and for this reason, I tried to give them a chance. But I basically see them as bendy, balancey, new-Age-music-dancing clowns. And it is...
This meme is The Year In Review: a compilation of first lines from first posts in every month last year (except because I am not very thinksy or observant, I did the last post of every month and didn't notice until I got to October). [via eac]...
I spent this evening shooting wolverines in Alaska with my grandpa. Or maybe doing free associations on my freakin' weblog. Goshhhhhhhhhhh....
I felt like I was obliged to say something about the tsunami disaster, but I couldn't think of anything original to say. It's terrible and catastrophic and disgusting. I didn't really have anything to add to what all of the bloggers around me have said and I felt bad about that. Yesterday on the news they were having a story about the Americans that were killed/missing (because American news loves Americans) and I suddenly had the feeling that someone had recently told me they were going to Thailand for Christmas Break. I can't remember who. So now I'm scared for...
I'm doing a meme. I haaaaaaaaaaaaaave to - Jez said. Else spiders!...
Everybody's Doing It So Why Why Can't We? Or rather, I? I've seen this on quite a few blogs now, so it's my turn. I don't share everything on the ol' blog, so some answers may be vague or avoided, but that's the price you pay for not knowing me in real life! [Someday there will be real content on this blog, but I have no amusing observations about life right now because I sit at home all day and play The Sims.]...
I am an upstanding member of the community and would never do anything wrong. But if, theoretically, I had decided well into the season that I wanted to see the deserted-island drama Lost and had downloaded or was currently downloading the first eleven episodes, then what follows is what I would think of the episodes that I had seen (but of course, you understand, it's completely hypothetical because I would never ever download TV shows from the Internet): Alfie and I were watching episode 3 today and noticed that the supervising producer is Javier Grillo-Marxuach. I love it when his...
At Marshall Field's today I saw a big display for the new fragrance "Trump". My first objection to this fragrance is that "Trump" sounds like "frump" or "stump." This is not an attractive image for a cologne. It's just not an attractive word. Trump trump trump. (In doing a little research for this post, I discovered that a "trump" is a fart in UK English.) Putting the sound and meaning of the name of the cologne aside, Trump? The connotation is that by wearing this cologne, you will be associated with Donald Trump. So you will be seen as a...
Lost our internet connection last night, so this one's a little later than usual. This is a song by a French rock group. It's kind of funny to see French rock videos because they get all kitted out like they're Limp Bizkit or Korn or something and then they sing a song that's rather sweet and poppy. Poor dears can't help it - it's the chanson tradition which seems to pervade all French music and force them to sing intelligible lyrics. Not rockish at all, those intelligible lyrics! Anyway, this one is about teenaged angst and wanting to run away...
I had a dream where we went to meet a distant cousin. He lived on the shores of a big lake. My mom parked the car and went in to meet him, leaving us behind in the car. The waves from the lake kept getting higher and higher until they were so high they would touch the roof of the car. I decided I should back up and get farther away from the lake so I started up the car while the waves were receding and put it into reverse... and it went forward. I got really scared because the...
Let me introduce myself. I am Srahmom or Alfiemom or Mommy. I had knee replacement surgery in September and am preparing to go back to work next week after being off for almost three months. Currently, my life is spent walking and riding our stationary bicycle. Walking in the Mall In late October my therapist told me that I could finally start walking in the Mall. I was very excited since it meant that I could go somewhere else other than the physical therapy clinic and the doctor's office. Walking was slow, I had to use my cane and was...
Congratulations to Marn's Big Adventure, winner of the 3500-5000 category in the 2004 Weblog Awards. Alas, I dropped from 2nd to 7th place (although running in a completely different field than last year!) but did manage to finish above 5.0%, as hoped! Thanks, you guys!...
You know what this blog hasn't had enough of lately? Whining about the weather. C'mon, you know you all miss it! I have recently found myself thinking that winter really isn't that tough. I don't know what all the fuss is about... little brown furry things with short stumpy legs and great long noses... Nope. Apparently what I thought was winter was, in fact, an anteater. A winter, I have discovered today, is a huge savage beast, ten feet long, with masses of sharp pointed teeth and it looks like this-- Right. Stop that; it's silly. Point is, it's a...
Nominations are open for yet another blogging contest! This one is aimed at smaller blogs and no political blogs are allowed. If you want a favorite lesser-known blog to get recognition, nominate it now! Also: "As an extra incentive, if you nominate a blogger between now and December 17th, your name will go into a special drawing for this week's "door prize": a free custom skin from Web Divas."...
Another week, another set of free associations. Terms to free-associate on are provided by the lovely (I'm sure) pea... click on the icon to play along in your own blog! </advertisement>...
One of my most frequent duties here at work is to direct people to the Office of International Programs. It makes perfect sense that people would be confused between all of the "international" offices on campus. There's our office, which deals with non-UM-affiliated study abroad programs; the OIP, which handles all of UM's own study abroad programs; the International Center, which deals with the needs of international students coming into UM; and the International Institute, which is an academic unit comprised of the Area Studies departments. Anyway, I think at least half of my interactions with visitors to the office...
Give your mom a hug. Through BlogExplosion I came across the story of an Alaska girl who had her mother murdered and then seemed to think it was quite an inconvenience to her own life. From her livejournal: "Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered I won't have computer acess until the weekend or so because the police took my computer to go through the hard drive. I thank everyone for their thoughts and e-mails, I hope to talk to you when I get my computer back." This is despicable. Mums are precious commodities, folks. [via someone whose...
As I've mentioned before, my group presentation in my Marketing Management class is going to be on Converse footwear. We've been having a bit of trouble deciding what route we want to go because it seems there are so many different people who like Converse for so many different reasons. It fits into a lot of niches and it's hard to market towards just one segment or belief. So I'm curious (and as long as I have all of those BlogExplosion people captive here for 30 seconds): What do you think of Converse shoes? What are the first things that...
Amanda and I have been working on a project together all semester which was due yesterday. In addition to finishing the project, we had to tell the class about what we'd done. Amanda and I (or at least I) only really thought about this about a half an hour before class began. We jotted down some notes as to what we'd talk about and who'd say who, went to class, and saw the first group's PowerPoint slides on the screen. Jigga-whaaaa? Luckily there were plenty of groups who wanted to go before us, so we managed to throw some slides...
I used to be a lot more interested/obsessed with my website traffic and trying to get new readers and joining every link-swap device and directory available. I think I'm kind of at a point now where I'd just like to know who's reading and whether they like it. But Buzz was recently talking about BlogExplosion and I thought I'd give it a try. You surf around other people's sites and collect "credits" that translate into page views for other people who are surfing. It encourages people to explore new blogs and I've found a few interesting ones in my surfing....
Wizbang is again hosting its Weblog Awards. I actually did surprisingly well last year! Nominations have begun if there's anything you'd like to nominate me (or your favorite sites) for... I am ranked #3846 in the Blogosphere Ecosystem, which makes me a Slithering Reptile, two categories up from last year's Flippery Fish ranking. The first place finisher in my category last year, sweetness follows..., has already evolved into a Flappy Bird, so it looks like I'll have different competition this time. Wish me luck! I've listed all of the categories in the extension. Visit the 2004 Weblog Awards nominations category...
I got my first Big Girl Coat* about a month ago in a size that I will not reveal to you because you will hate me. Once I got it home, I decided it was too big and ordered the coat a size lower. Until I got around to returning the unwanted coat to the store, I would not allow myself to wear the one I was keeping. It was my way of making sure I actually got around to it. I returned the coat to the store yesterday and decided that my coat would make its debut today. I...
Dear WNIC, All this fake-ass pre-Thanksgiving Christmasery is driving me nuts. It is harder and harder for me to resist decorating the blog for the holidays. Your somewhat loyal fan, srah Dear Stupid Band On The Radio Who Used The Phrase "supersize our tragedy," Oh my god, you suck. What the hell was that? srah Dear Saleswoman at Ann Taylor, I'm sorry I argued with you. You said the coat I was returning had been paid for with a check and I argued that it had been bought with a credit card and went on and on with my...
When Jez was here, he made fun of me when I revealed to him that at age 8, I had a huge crush on Oliver Twist in the musical Oliver!. The boy has the voice of an angel! I still have a crush on him, no matter how sick and weird that is! Which fictional characters have you had crushes on? Notice I didn't phrase that, Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?. No, I am a dork and I expect everyone else to be just as geeky as I am. So with no further ado, I...
I dreamt last night that I was approached in the graduate library and asked if I wanted to be in a band. Apparently someone's entertainment had fallen through and they needed to form a band quickly. So I ended up in a band with Matt and with Joe from Team America: World Police. Joe was a human rather than a puppet in the dream, but that didn't really make it much better because we were still completely unmatched. Our "manager" found a piece of tape to put on Joe's face and lip so that he would have a permanent sneer,...
I left work today and checked my cell phone to see if I had any new messages. "INSERT SIM CARD," said my cell phone. I froze with fear*. In the book I've been trying to read for a month now, all of the characters, who are trapped on an island, have the SIM cards in their cell phones removed. Then they get lost in the woods, accidentally eat the chef for dinner and get hunted for sport. I have to assume that when your SIM card is missing, that means you are in for the same. Luckily, turning the phone...
I came to a point a few weeks ago where I realized I had enough shoes and I couldn't justify buying any others. There were no more shoes I needed. It was horrifying. What is there to live for, if not for the acquisition of shoes? Thankfully, my Marketing Management group has decided to do our December presentation on Converse™ footwear and have decided that we should all buy a pair of Converse™ to wear to the presentation. This resulted in a sizable portion of our Sunday meeting being devoted to surfing the Converse™ store and oohing and aaahing over...
Associations have been freed from the seething turmoil of my mind. Or something....
Screw you, Michigan. And screw you, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Ohio and Utah. In Michigan, this piece of shit says that "the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose." (emphasis mine). Way to go, America. Who needs civil rights, anyway? I don't know how someone could justify voting for something that so blatantly discriminates. In other news, it looks like we're up for four more years of the rest of the world hating us and our president trying to convince us...
I have upgraded to Movable Type 3.12. Things are fishy. I am scared. I thought I had lost all of my comments before June 2003, but this may not be the case. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Update: Apparently I have to manually approve all comments now. I will let you know if I figure out how to turn this off but in the meantime, you should probably assume your comment's gone through. Also, none of my comments are SHOWING UP on the front page. Who the hell knows why? Update: Now new comments are showing up but the existing ones only do if...
Unchronological, disorganized thoughts from my weekend in Chicago with Jez: My hair and I can never live together in Chicago. If I were to be employed in Chicago, we would have to be parted. (My hair is normally parted, but in this case, it would have to be parted from me.) The Windy City is, indeed, quite windy. My poor head. We went to The Melting Pot for fondue on Sunday night. Mummmmmnummmyummmy. Bread, apples and vegetables in cheese. Seafood and vegetables boiled in oil. Evurrrrrrthing dipped in chocolate. 'Twere wonderful. You know what's funny? Museum space exhibits that list...
I am cleaning my room in preparation for Jez's arrival on Saturday. Unfortunately, by "cleaning my room" I mean "making no visible progress on cleaning my room because I spent a lot of time organizing my CD collection instead of dusting and clearing up the piles of clutter." The only advantage is that now my CD collection is nicely ordered and I got to listen to a few things while organizing. So I bring you a selection from various mix CDs I made in college: Sarah MacLachlan - I Love You Coldplay - Everything's Not Lost REM - Everybody Hurts...
I came to my meagre appreciation poetry because of the movies. I don't feel that any effort was really made in my education to encourage us to read or enjoy poetry... off the top of my head, I can't remember ever reading any in school. So when I was growing up and especially in my first year of college, poetry was something to be feared - something written by Jewel and angsty college freshmen and other people with no talent. Not having had that basis in school, I have to say that my poetical education is very limited, extending mostly...
At nearly three in the morning, the contents of my mind are laid before you, in a free-associating style. Or something. Listen, I had to write an intro and I have to do it every week and I never know what to say. And are you really reading this part anyway? Let's just get to the "good" stuff....
Heavily influenced this week by L. Frank Baum and G. Stupid Lucas......
Here thar be meme regarding international... relations....
I dreamt last night that I was sitting in a movie theatre, watching a movie, when the lights came on and Mr T walked in with two deliverymen. Mr T started announcing that he had some flowers for someone who was a geek and some other things that made me suspicious that it was me, so I sank deeper and deeper into my seat until Mr T found me and presented me with a bouquet of red roses, plus two brown ones (not dead, just roses that were brown), a black one and a white one. The four extra flowers...
I am a grown-up. I have arrived. I am now part of that money-making age segment that radio stations pander to: the 20-something young professional. Ha ha, stupid radio stations! I have no money! Fooled you! So suddenly the music of my youth* is actually being played on the radio again. And the radio is exactly where it belongs. For the radio is played in my car, when I am all alone in the vehicle. And believe me, I really ought to be alone when this music is played. I am well-known as a mishearer of lyrics, making up new...
I was driving today and had to stop for a very stupid black-and-white cat who had decided to take up roost in the middle of my street. It occurred to me that while a black-and-white cat would have little camouflage in order to survive in the wild, his coloring makes him quite visible to drivers and protects him in an urban environment. This isn't very interesting, but I wanted an excuse to blog pictures of a cat that isn't even mine: Chairman Meow, you are the safest cat of all!...
Are there any Scion xB owners out there in my readership? The whole existence of Scion seems to have happened while I was out of the country, so I think I'm just not getting it. What is the attraction to driving a toaster?...
Note to self: Espresso Royale has the worst, most expensive and possibly smallest chai tea latte of all the coffeeshops in close proximity to West Hall. I don't know why you manage to forget this so often and waste $2.50 on sludge rather than paying $1.95 for something rather nice at Amer's. I don't know either how ERC's chai manages to be so awful when it seems like every place in town just uses Oregon Chai from the carton. Perhaps they blend their own monstrosity rather than trusting the experts. De toute façon, avoid at all cost. Try to remember...
Had a chat yesterday with the teacher who mentioned me in class, wherein I said something along the lines of, "You know, the best classes are the ones that ruin your life." I guess I didn't mean ruin per se, but rather "permanently change the way you look at the world so that you never see things in the same way again." I think I managed to backpedal enough that he got the general idea. Today I was annoyed to discover a user interface design flaw... with a parking structure. I parked in the S. Forest structure on the "4...
As you may know, the Ryder Cup is being held in Detroit this year. What you may not know is that one arm of the company I worked for this summer is doing a hospitality-fundraiser-thing for the Ryder Cup and that the first project I had this summer was to make a website featuring some of the ticket and hospitality packages they were shilling. A project which I did, handily, in under a week, asking my project-supervisor for feedback along the way and being summarily ignored. A project which, I assume, never had any point at all except to keep...
My free associations are very very boring. Bah!...
Maybe it's because it's from 5pm to 8pm and preceded by seven hours of other classes, but so far, the class I was most looking forward to is looking the least promising. It is my normal course of action to fall in love with whatever class I am taking (Anthropology, English Language, Evaluation of Systems and Services) and decide it's what I want to do for the rest of my life. This time, I spent the whole summer claiming to be an information architect and got rather attached to the idea. And now that I'm actually looking at studying it...
Tomorrow is the first day of school! Are my pencils sharpened? Are my books covered in brown paper bags? Do I have a box of sharp new crayons? No. On the contrary, I am in no way prepared for school to start again. I haven't bought a single book yet, I never got around to getting my hair cut (it's been... oh, around four months now since I've even had a trim), I don't know what I'm going to wear, and I'm supposed to have started the reading for my Thursday class at the Business School (scary!) and be ready...
Thanks and congratulations to everyone who participated in Language Week, most of whom did much better than I did: Stuart, Jez, pea, Armin and Annica. See you again in another 14 months or so?...
I am the worst founder of Language Week ever! Je suis la pire fondatrice de la Semaine Linguistique!</half-assed attempt to use foreign language>...
Thanks to Jez, Stuart and pea for participating! If you're playing along in your blog, please let me know! Une experience intéressante... j'ai écrit l'article en anglais, et puis je l'ai traduit en français lors de son enregistrement. Vous pouvez écouter cet article (j'ai dit 'poste' dans l'enregistrement, parce que je n'avais pas encore cherché la traduction) en français, et puis le lire en anglais dans l'entrée étendue*. ––––– * Note to manager of the Multilingual Bloglossary: Why is it an "article" but an "entrée" étendue?...
I received a sample of Ice Breakers Liquid Ice™ Instant Liquid Mints, stuck to the cardboard protectory-thing on my chai tea today. On the back of the package is written: Safety Warning: Avoid contact with eyes. Right. I hate it when that happens. Update: People Are Stupid, #413: Especially me. These mints are awful!!!1...
Bueno. Es de nuevo La Semana de los Idiomas y hace dos años desde la última vez que aprendí el castellano. No hay mucho necesidad para el español en Michigan o en Francia. El padre del Pato es en los Estados Unidos por el momento para visitar su hijo y no habla mucho inglés, entonces quizás voy a necessitar hablarlo este fin de semana. Si no necessito el español solamente para entender el Jezito, que me habla tal vez en el español Canario, lo que no entendería incluso si había estudiado el español recientemente. (All words and phrases in italics...
If you're trying to email me on my school account and your messages are bouncing back, it's because they're migrating us over to a different system and they don't know what they're doing. So in the meantime, please try srah-at-srah-dot-net or quesrah-at-gmail-dot-com. Thank ye kindly....
Likes: Being able to get a teacup, heat up water and take milk out of refrigerator all in the same room; DVD selection; free refills in restaurants; having a radio/tape player in the car; not having to get gas/petrol every time one goes out; not having to slam on the brake pedal to stop. Dislikes: Accidentally slamming on the brake pedal to stop; Olympic basketball on TV; jet lag; unpacking; all signage exclusively in English; lack of widespread text-messaging culture; RONALD FREAKING MCDONALD ON THE FREAKING TELEVISION DIE CLOWN DIE....
A repeat of Language Week has been requested and shall be granted. Yes, I know it happened in June last year, but I'm in charge and I say it happens in August this year. Ah, power! So I bring you: LANGUAGE WEEK 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO August 30 - September 5, 2004 Here be ze rhools: Blog in a language that you don't usually blog in. You don't have to blog a lot if you don't want to - a few sentences will do, as long as you continue, once a day, through the week (or at least Monday to Friday)....
I got to France on the anniversary of the D-Day invasion and am leaving on the day of the liberation of Paris. I'll be a bit sad to miss all of the television specials, actually. Got up in the morning, had breakfast, took a taxi to the RER, took the RER to Charles de Gaulle, stood in lines, went through security, stood in lines, got to the gate, stood in lines, sat around forever. No telephones and only one place to get food - where a bottle of iced tea cost 3,15€. Not bloody likely!* Got on the plane and...
Last one from France! Hurrah!...
Note: Okie dokie, I've loads of things to do before I leave, but posts are building up behind this one and you all must be sure by now that Jez has killed me. Rubbish, that. I am, of course, a small American girl, as you can tell when you hear me say, "Surrrrre, li'l laaady" like a proper American would. Spent a lovely weekend in England - which I shall perhaps not describe in detail due to time constraints and the fact that I need to actually get some stuff done before I leave here - and was spoilt rotten...
I went to England and I took a plane their and it was very nice and then I went to North Yorkshire and I saw sheep and bunnies too but not any ducks and I ate dinner as well and I watched videos too and I went to Tesco's as well and it was different from home because things were called different things like potato chips were called crisps but I didn't get them confused because I knew and we went to some castles that where there as well. (I have a bit of work to do and will do...
Guess that wasn't very hard. The lie was......
Alright, here they are! Two are true, one is false. Leave your guesses as to which is which in the blahblahs, if you please. In honor of the nearing end of my internship, all three take place in FRAAAHHHHNCE. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anyone to run them past in advance, so who knows - it could be very easy! (The directions are here if you want to play along in your own blog, or you can guess on other people's stories.)...
Greg is sick and demands a post. As I live in awe of his blogging power, I am only too pleased to oblige, except that I don't have anything particularly post-worthy to say. So here are some bits and pieces that aren't long or interesting enough for their own posts, but may add up to something that will please an elderly invalid. Went grocery shopping last night with Caroline and Jessica so that we could buy supplies for making dinner together. Got home. Went out to dinner with Caroline and Jessica. It's exactly two weeks until I go back home....
Some kinda weird Star Wars kick all up in this joint today. Free associations, coming your way anon. Pea gave me words, I thunk things up. Peace out....
Is it a full moon? Is that why everyone at this abbey is insane? I was eating dinner tonight around the corner from our kitchen when I heard someone walk into the kitchen and open the freezer door. I got up to see if it was Chris (who is now the only one who shares it with me - sniff sniff) and it wasn't. "Excuse me," I said to the man in our kitchen, "Um, this is the staff kitchen. It's for staff only." "I knowwwwwww," he replied petulantly, in the tone of voice used by sullen teenagers, although he...
This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future. Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to...
I will never again claim to have Internet access or a bathroom, because something fucking always goes wrong. The latest session of musicians to move in includes two harpists, and one of them is using the bedroom connected to my bathroom as a practice room. It was kind of nice, because I always ended up showering to harp music. It's certainly better than lunching to scratchy violins. Last night, I was in the bathroom when Caroline came to collect the last of her stuff and then I went upstairs, forgetting that she didn't have a key anymore to lock it...
It's Obfuscation Time again! Prepared to be fooled, and hopefully more successfully than last year! The Game: On Friday, August 13 you’ll post 3 stories. Two false and one true or Two true and one false Readers have to pick the false story(ies), leaving their guess in the comments. (Make sure you let them know which version of the game you’re playing.) On Monday, Ausgut 16 you’ll post the correct response. The stories can be as crazy as you want them to be. But you want to make them all believable enough that the reader has to give the game...
There's something gone wrong with the Internet infrastructure (the guy on the phone used the phrase "le backbone") of the Région Centre so that our ISDN (or whatever it is) connection doesn't work, but the ASDL at our B&B does. This has conveniently managed to happen right in the middle of prime summer vacation time, when everyone in France abandons their jobs to go to Normandy or Nice or wherever the hell they are instead of fixing my Internet!!!!!!1 So I've got a few precious moments of Internet to say that I miss you, and by "you" I mean my...
Spent a lovely weekend in Grenoble, visiting the host-fam (minus Denis, who is spending the summer hols wandering around in Egypt). I got to take a shower every morning and spent a lot of time being pénible and making terrible puns, which I will not burden you with because I've forgotten most of them* and they're all in French anyway and wouldn't translate. The trip there was frought with Americans. In the train from Onzain to Paris I avoided talking to the one in my compartment, but the one sitting across from me Paris-Grenoble addressed me first, asking if I...
I feel like doing a crappy meme. You got a problem with that?...
Nearing the end of my status interview with my supervisor: Supervisor: Are you happy? Me: (shrugs) Yeah, it's not bad, now that I have a bathroom again.* Supervisor: Is this internship everything you'd hoped it would be? (I think hard about how to respond diplomatically) Supervisor: Truthfully. Me: Truthfully... it's everything I expected it to be. Supervisor: How's that? Me: Well, I knew coming in that I probably wasn't going to get credit for it and that I wasn't going to be doing exactly what I wanted, but it was something to keep me busy over the summer, so... I'm...