Sunday, July 31, 2011

rationalization complete.

so i did that thing again.

you know, the thing where i sit for fifteen minutes in front of a page that says SIGN UP NOW! and then i finally click on that happy button and make a new website.

what more do i need?

i HAD a myspace, but we don't talk about that, do we.

i have a facebook.

i have a twitter.

i have this.

now i have a tumblr.

i will admit, i did not spend as long deciding to make a tumblr as i did to make a twitter. i spent a lot more time deciding to create THIS than i did deciding to make a tumblr. i think i might have rushed into this prematurely.

but yet again, i have reasons. at least i think i do.

you know that justification thing we all do. you think, "okay. here are all the reasons i'm going to do this." and the only reason you're coming up with reasons is because you already know you're going to do it and you just need to justify it to yourself to make yourself feel better.

dean koontz can describe that feeling a bunch better than i can.

"but she was striving hard to rationalize it, because she had already made up her mind that this was what she was going to do."

like that.

so a tumblr is a second blog. i don't need a second blog. i have this one. it holds my go! challenge and so many happy things i've written down. i enjoy this blog. i love writing it. i love the fact that i even have it, however vain that sounds. i enjoy blogspot terrifically.

so why did i make a tumblr?

here comes my insane crazy rationalization, and oddly, it sounds a lot like my rationalization to get a twitter: tumblr is, yet again, more freeing.

here i write blogs. long ones. like the one i wrote yesterday about my weekend and the parrot. and that REALLY long one about the weekend with my boyfriend and the shifting gears and the taco bell and the premature guitar buying and the life aquatic.

on tumblr i post disembodied quotes and pictures and reblog things from other tumblrs and let people know that i am obsessed with the lion king and matthew gray gubler and e. e. cummings and strawberries and that i am superstitious about my underwear.

i don't do those kind of shenigans on here. this is my philosophy, my life, and how i put it down into words. tumblr is pictures and quotes and basically that awesome picture collage i made on walgreens.com.

tumblr defeated me for probably an hour. i think it is still crushing me under the weight of its "i am a new blog site and i am hard to use" fist, wherease blogspot was nice and simple. but i have since half crawled out from under tumblr's fist, and i have posted three things.

one is a picture of lolita. (stop judging. i can feel it.)

two is my testament to bringing the word 'terrific' back into terrific use.

three is a dr. spencer reid quote about murder that i have on a sticky note on my computer screen.

i have no followers. my tumblr is merely an hour old, has three random posts that don't really make much sense, and i'm not sure how to reblog things. or like things. i am following my next door neighbor from alma, but she probably doesn't know that i follow her yet, and just because i follow her doesn't mean that she will follow me.

this was a painful twitter realization for me last month.

do i need a tumblr in my life? absolutely not.

do i want tumblr in my life? i have absolutely no idea.

will i learn how to use tumblr eventually? absolutely. because i am persistent to the point of insanity.

so. if you do the tumblr thing, you can find me here.

yes. that's a coldplay lyric. did you think that runwhenyourun.blogspot.com wasn't a lyric? (and it's matchbox twenty. if you were wondering.)

rationalization complete.


"to get away with murder, you simply don' tell anyone." -- dr. spencer reid.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

this is how my life works.

okay. there is no possible way that i could not blog about this. so here i am, blogging about it. i'm trying to wrap my head around how ridiculous my life is, amd possibly writing this all down will help me see that it really is ridiculous or i'm just overreacting to how my weekends turn out.

remember my calendar, the big one my dad got me as a late birthday present? there was something for every day in june. now there's something for every day in july. back in the day, during my go! challenge, i decided that i would drive three hours to spend the weekend with my brother on campus at alma. he's living in the fraternity as usual and doing his creepy crawly spider research. mariah, my former roommate, is also up there doing turtle research, and i swear to god we were born to live together, so this was going to be a good weekend.

fun fun fun for everyone!

so. i set off on my three hour car journey in the rain. i have my own sheets because aaron advised me to bring my own. i have a pillow. i have my gigantic purple bag with everything i will need. i have my window down because everybody drives on the highway in the rain with their windows down, right? i listened to kanye west. it seems to take forever to get to michigan, and that's the short part of the drive. that's the less than an hour part.



after having spent nine months living in michigan, i have learned their radio stations. around coldwater i can totally pick up the ballin' indie station. that station is terrific. not only does it play indie music that i can never hear on the radio, but it spans the whole freakin' state. i listened to that station from the indiana border all the way to alma.

i spent the entire drive dancing to indie music (i almost blew out my speakers when little lion man came on i was that excited). i always have to pee because i drink dr. pepper whenever i drive more than two hours, and i had to stop at the rest stop that's one mile from the alma exit. i know. i'm pathetic.

as soon as i turned on superior street and had about ten miles to go, my phone goes off.

i answer it.

i know. i know. i get so mad at people who talk on their phones and drive. but i figure that if somebody is trying to call me while i'm driving to alma, it's pretty damn important. so i answered it and inwardly cursed myself for talking and driving.

it was the nice ONE lady asking if this was a good time for me to schedule my spinal injection. you read that correctly. that's a needle going into my spine that i have to schedule. so i weigh my options. is this a good time to schedule my appointment? if it's not, she'll probably call me back when i'm busy at alma with my phone lying on my brother's bedroom floor. so i tell her yes, this is fine.

she talks to me the whole drive into alma. and into the parking lot. and after i park the car behind the frat house. and as i'm moving my stuff into the frat house. she talks and talks and talks. and repeats herself a bunch. and then doesn't tell me what time my appointment actually is, just that i have to be there an hour early, and that i won't be able to drive myself home.

how scary is that?

zeta sigma fraternity!
upon entering the fraternity, i alert my parents that i have made it in one piece, i hum little lion man, and i climb the steep steps up my brother's room. he is nowhere to be seen. so i dump my stuff on his floor and call him. five times. and like a good brother, he doesn't answer. so i set off across campus to accost mariah, my beautiful roommate.

i catch her playing pool at the rec center. we wander into the science building and she shows me all of the snakes, lizards, turtles, the alligator, and then gigantic fish that roams the lobby named paco. paco likes pink shirts, i discovered. really likes them. i think he's a piranha. and he's terrifically giganto.

mariah dropped me back off at zeta (the fraternity for those of you who don't know that zeta is a greek letter) and my brother gives me a big hug and says, i'm taking you out to dinner at the bar because they don't card until nine o'clock and it's FRIDAY!

i, of course, am twenty, and after nine o'clock, would not be let in. so this is perfect. and all aaron has to eat is ramen. the life of a college kid.

so aaron and biggie (i do not know his real name. true story.) and i walk downtown to the bar. i get a water. biggie gets some form of drink with lots of vodka. aaron orders one of those tall, perfectly amber beers that you only see in movies. he gets a large cheeseburger. biggie gets some form of chicken wrap. i get cheese quesadillas. the evening continues. my back begins to hurt. my brother has now had three of these perfectly amber beers. mariah is due to pick me up for some hardcore roommate bonding. so i walk back to the frat house by myself around seven thirty. i smell like grease and my hair is getting flat. i do not see my brother again until the next morning.

after running into max and playing with the kitten that he's babysitting, mariah picks me up in her truck and we drive to her professor's house. he's in ecuador and she's living there, taking care of his four dogs, one cat, and three parrots. you can hear the squawking outside. and down the street. i have a gigantic bag full of criminal minds and chuck DVDs for our viewing pleasure. there is a gigantic dog trying to jump on me and a huge parrot named jet sitting on my shoulder squawking his head off while mariah and i try to work the television. which completely fails.

so we drive back to campus and crash the south campus lobby.

we actually watched season 4.
no with no squawking birds and dogs and cats to make me sneeze, we put our feet up on a table and plow our way through criminal minds. hotch gets blown up, prentiss and reid get held hostage by a cult, and then reid gets anthrax. but we don't care because we're having way too much fun just sitting on a couch and talking about our summers and our excitement for RA training and how much we freakin' miss each other. this is the most normal part of my weekend.

mariah drops me back off at zeta after giving me a gigantic mariah-hug at midnight, and aaron is not in his room. his room has a gigantic lofted bed, and i'm supposed to be sleeping on it. his roommate has some grody sheets on there, so i spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to get to them. i finally wobble on aaron's desk, which is not able to support my weight for forever long, and i throw the sheets on the floor. i knock off a couple of empty beer bottles and his laundry money in the process. i then spend half an hour trying to make the damn bed with my own sheets. there is just no good way to get onto the loft, there's a gigantic cabinet nailed to the loft, and brandon (the roommate) has a lot of other stuff lying around.

i will not talk about the bathroom in the fraternity. it is too gross to write about.

the mattress was about as comfortable as a two by four. i slept badly. i woke up at least five times, and every time i did, i checked under the bunk for my brother. he never showed up.

i was woken up at nine fifteen by the drumline across the street and i missed marching band. then i realized i really had to poop and i was not about to do that at the frat.

so i took my shower stuff, crossed the street, and snuck into the athletic building.

this is the athletic building. :)
it was very exciting, sneaking around the athletic building with my shoes off to remain quiet. the locker room was open (the swimming one was not) and i took a nice shower. i sang loudly. i pooped. i did my hair. i looked for my swim coach. i ran and hid from two athletic tours like i was a CIA spy. i then wandered around campus and snuck into my old dorm building. i didn't get very far; there were recarpeting the entire building and it smelled terrible.

after an hour of wandering around campus, i came back to the fraternity and found my brother completely sacked out on his bed, utterly oblivious to the drumline and the fact that it was almost eleven o'clock. so i hijacked his computer and sent a #pooptweet, talking about the excitement of me breaking into the athletic building to find a decent place to take a shit.

when my brother finally roused himself, he explained that he had the spent the night at an alum's house because he had not been sober enough to walk back to the fraternity. i told him i had broken into the althetic building and probably walked two miles around campus and that was i slightly disappointed, because we were supposed to hang out and have fun.

he grumbled about his hangover.

thus i did not stay in alma as long as i had planned. i packed up my things (after aaron cooked me a frozen pizza for lunch) and headed back to indiana, happy i had gotten to wander around campus and bond with mariah, and slightly upset that my brother had decided to get trashed the one weekend i came to visit. but then again, i think he gets trashed just about every weekend.

to make the drive home quick: this really angry minivan passed me twenty miles away from alma. halfway home i accidentally pressed a bad button and had to pull over and call my dad (he fixed it!) and that put me fifteen minutes behind. i passed that van again in indiana, 140 miles later, and i did not change my cruising speed at all. i like my car to go 74 on the highway. so i'm not really sure what was up with that van.

i'm not sure if i did this weekend justice. it's hard to explain how you feel when you're trying to get a television to work with a gigantic hairy dog jumping on you and a bird sitting on your shoulder. mostly you just pray it doesn't poop on you. it's also hard to describe the really terrifying/liberating feeling of sneaking around the gigantic athletic building, holding your shoes, and checking around corners to get to the locker room undetected.

these things don't happen to me all that often. but situations that feel the same way happen to me all the time.

i think my life is ridiculous. i think this blog is very long. i applaud you for reading it.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

"i'm not finished!"

i've blogged about this before. please don't shoot me.

without sounding vain and crass, i'd like to say that i'm a decently smart individual. i graduated in the top three percent of my class. i am planning on conquering a foreign language in four years. i have a very bright plan for my hopefully very bright future. i'm going to college and getting over half of my thirty-eight thousand dollar tuition paid for because of academic prowess.
and i'm trying to reinstate the word terrific all on my own.

so i'd like to think i'm a decently smart individual.

therefore, i am smart enough to know that perfection does not exist.

however, i am not smart enough to realize that i cannot achieve said perfection, because i sure as hell am trying to achieve it.

once again, i've started a blog with a seemingly pointless introduction (and with worthless things about myself, even!) just to finally get to the actual point of my blog and that point is three words: rondo. alla. turca.

mozart's turkish march.

i've been in concert band long enough to know what a march is, and i spent all of those years playing trumpet, of all things. i'm still trying to figure out how rondo alla turca is a march. to my ears, it doesn't sound like a march. the time signature is fine, but it really does seem to jump around. A minor. A major. F sharp minor (same key signature as A major!) and finally it just hangs out for a while in A major and ends there on a happy flourish.

i think it's part of a movement in A major. i'm not going to complain. A major is my favorite key. i'm nerdy enough to have a favorite key. to listen to and to play in.

if you read my previous blog way back in my go! challenge about how practice makes perfect and how nobody likes to practice unless you're the epitome of musicianship, then you know that i have been teaching myself this godforsaken march since may.

this is, in fact, a lie.

i know. how could i lie to you, my faithful reader? i sincerely apologize.

my mother stopped giving me piano lessons at the tender age of fourteen or fifteen, most likely fifteen, but she did point me in the right direction with rondo alla turca. we had been working on it. i had loudly rejected a terrible piece by bach after refusing to practice it for three months (she finally said to me, "FINE. DON'T PRACTICE. DON'T PLAY IT. I GIVE UP ON YOU.") and thus we moved onto rondo alla turca. i got a good page in. that's the part that people recognize, the A minor part, and then it moves smoothly into the three times repeated A major part that is the most fun to play.

then she stopped giving me lessons.

i had the first page memorized. one of my few and far between skills is memorizing music at an incredibly quick rate. i kept it lodged in my brain. when somebody talked about rondo alla turca, i'd sit down and blast my way through the first page, playing it fast enough that nobody would notice that i could hardly play it at all. i could play the right hand (incorrectly, i later learned) of the second page, the part that nobody knows exists. (if you don't even know what rondo alla turca sounds like and feel stupid right now, don't. some people just aren't mozart people. and of course i'm going to post a video of it at the end of this blog... if it ever ends.)


so i've had the first page of rondo alla turca up my sleeve for a good five years. at least four and a half. occasionally, during my busy high school years, i would sit down at the piano and plink around on that nasty second page, the F sharp minor that disguised itself as A major through key signature, and i thought, hmm. this looks increasingly difficult.



octaves from hell.
 the third page is the exact same as the first except for the beautiful A major repeated part. that had a slight change. and it turns out that it was the hardest part of the damn song. i thought, well, i'll never be able to play this, those are some nasty octaves from hell.

and then, this past may, i sat down and told myself that i would do this.

i have since memorized the song. i rarely look at the music, only if i want to directly pinpoint an accent or make sure that my dynamics are exactly correct. i have conquered those octaves from hell. i can sit down and play rondo alla turca.

but i can't feel good about it.

this is where the part about perfection comes in. i've been teaching myself this song all stinkin' summer and i won't quit practicing it. the other day, after playing it for nearly an hour, i said in a very exasperated voice, "i absolutely hate this song." my father replied, "then why do you keep playing it?" to which my response was, "it's not finished!"

when it will be finished, i have no idea.

if i am indeed trying to achieve perfection, i'm going to be playing this song for the rest of my life. perfection does not exist. i will never achieve perfection. but i do believe that i can always play it better than i did last time, and that there is some magic thing i can do to make this happen.

there are so many variables that affect my ability to play it better than last time. my fingernails can be too long and clack on the keys. my hand can itch. my fingers might not be sufficiently warmed up. they might be freezing. they might be too warm and sticky. i might have to pee halfway through the song. my foot can slip off the pedal. i might lean too far forward at a certain point (i do tend to move with the music).

there's also another variable i did not foresee. i know the song well enough i can think about other things while i play it. this works well for other songs, in fact, it's rather fun. i can be playing and then look down and say, "oh look, i'm almost done, how did that happen?" it's a different story with rondo alla turca. the first two lines are repeated twice. then the next three twice. then the second page is repeated in chunks. then the third page. the only page that doesn't have a single repeat is the last page.

occasionally i will lose my train of thought and then think to myself: how many times have i played this? once? twice? god forbid three times? then i know i'm not practicing correctly.

music has so many variables that depend on the musician. i am not perfect. therefore the piece cannot be.

i am not a professional pianist. i'm not a prodigy. i will never play it as well as a professional or a child prodigy. i'm just a twenty year old girl who took piano lessons from her mother and suddenly became manic when she returned from her first year of college with the conviction that she would learn mozart's turkish march.

i'm not sure what i was thinking.

for those of you who are still saying, "was i really supposed to have heard of rondo alla turca and i just missed that part of my education?" here is what it sounds like. i've posted this on my previous blog. hopefully, by the time i'm ninety-eight, i'll be able to play it this well.

for your listening pleasure. :)

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

i'll wear a red hat for blogging.

this morning for breakfast i ate a gigantic bowl of regular cheerios.

none of that honey nut crap. i eat real cheerios.

while i was eating my bowl of terrific regular cheerios, i was reading the newspaper. i'm one of those weird people who actually reads the newspaper because in my house, unless chuck or criminal minds is on, the TV stays off. i don't need a woman with too much makeup to tell me the news when i can read it for myself in the morning on my own time.

in the living section, i was reading about a professional blogger. which is why i guess i'm blogging.

remember when i wrote about how i read that article about blogging on wikihow?

yeah, me neither.

but i read that nice long article about how to blog and how to get your blog to attract attention and all of those other things. way at the bottom there was something about getting your blog noticed and possibly how to get paid for blogging.

the profession "professional blogger" astounds me.

don't get me wrong, it sounds absolutely fantastic to sit here and blog (like i'm doing right now at the kitchen nook with my spanish homework all over the table) and get paid for it. but how does this work? what exactly is the income?

i really like that commercial about the shrimp blogger. he travels the world, samples shrimp, and blogs about it. he's a professional blogger. but i'm wondering: where on earth is his money to travel the world and eat expensive shrimp? and could i possibly find a different reason to travel the world and blog, because i'm allergic to shrimp? it's so unfortunate, because i really do enjoy eating shrimp.

i've sat and thought about the wonderful things i could blog about. i mean, a blog is really supposed to have a trend. i could start another blog simply about spanish. and world language. and my quest to become fluent and study abroad in spain when i'm twenty-one. but i instead i just write disjointed horrible blogs that a few of you read.

i have no hope of achieving professional blogger status.

but this still raises questions for me. how does one become a professional blogger? is it really as fun as commercials depict it? if i actually became a professional blogger (pray that doesn't happen for everyone's sanity), what would i blog about? and my number one question:

if i actually became a professional blogger, would i end up forcing myself to pop out crappy blogs just to get paid because i'd rather be blogging about dumb things like this instead of what i'm actually supposed to be blogging about?

yikes. so many questions. so many times i've typed some variation of the word blog.

i am hunting for the infinitive "to blog" in spanish. when i find it (or create it!) i will have a little dance party.

if i were to become a professional blogger, i think my number once thing that i would blog about would be music. out of all of the things that i am absolutely in love with, music has to be the most passionate. i also recently got spotify. if you love music and don't have spotify, i suggest you get it. NOW.

there is a flaw with this concept: i have absolutely no idea how to review music. or movies. or... well... anything. i'm not a critic. i'm a college kid with a blog that nobody reads. i have no critiquing experience. so how on earth would i be able to listen to good music and then blog about its terrificness or terribleness?

yet again, professional blogger status slips through my grasp.

i think i'm okay with this. i'm going to college to become a teacher. but it would be very nice to be an adventurer. you know, travel the world and just write about stuff. it would be pretty fantastic. mostly just to travel the world.

new goal: travel the world and blog without being a professional blogger. just blog.

if i were a professional blogger, i would want to be steve zissou. because he sure knows about adventure. i really just want his hat.


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

magic never dies.

i am going to start off this blog by saying i am annoying.

especially when it comes to harry potter. (look at me, blogging about harry potter. twice in a row, no doubt. how dare she.)

if you've read my previous blogs, then you know that i've read those books forty-four times. actually... i've read the third book forty-five because on monday i got bored and read it. yes, i can finish a harry potter book in a day. with my three hour class. i swear, when you read a book that many times, you can read almost as fast as dr. spencer reid. and that's pretty damn fast.

so. i digress.

i'm annoying. i'm probably annoying in other aspects of my life, but i know for a fact that when i watch a harry potter movie, i am ANNOYING AS HELL. on the way home my father told me i was extremely distracting, especially when i sat there muttering, "no, no, stop talking, don't do that you idiot, WHAT?!" and i did that like, the whole movie. don't see a harry potter movie with me. it's just a terrible idea. i will drive you insane.

when you've read a harry potter book forty-four times, you know how everything is supposed to go. you know what's verbatim and what isn't. you know what's extra, you know what's not there. you know everything wrong and everything right, and everything wrong is like something stabbing you in the back.

as you've probably guessed, i just got back from the last harry potter movie.

now, i'm not going to spend forever talking about what was wrong and what was terrific. that's not the point of this blog. so i'll just say this.

what was wrong: everything about voldemort's death.

what was right: not much.

what was wrong but awesome: making out in the chamber of secrets.

one day, i will make out with someone in the chamber of secrets, and then i will die happy.

what i'm really here to talk about is how everybody has been absolutely freaking out since they got home at three o'clock on friday morning after seeing the movie at midnight.

all over twitter, all over facebook, all over the media, this was being said: HARRY POTTER IS OVER. MY CHILDHOOD IS OVER. OMG. IT'S OVER.

what the hell are you people talking about?!

i went into the movie with my parents fully expecting to cry. i did. when i read the book the first time when i was sixteen, i cried. i laughed. i screamed. i was sucked in. and when the book ended, i fully realized that it was over. no more harry potter books would come out. my parents wouldn't preorder them for my birthday and i could no longer hole up in my room and devour them as fast as i could, waiting for the next one to come out in two years. that was all over.

i felt like that after the book ended. everybody is saying that their childhood ended. didn't you feel that way when the book ended, like i did? because if it ended anywhere, that's where it ended.

but it's not ending. i think you're absolutely crazy if you say that it's ended.

i am living proof of this. i have read the seventh book forty-four times. when i came home from the movie an hour ago trying not to cry, what did i do? i curled up in bed and started to read the seventh book for the forty-fifth time, that's what i did.

that's not my childhood ending.

magic has no end. harry potter will live as long as you let it. as long as you watch the movies, as long as you read the books. as long as you talk about it. as long as you carry the magic, harry potter WILL NEVER. END.

i am going to read harry potter for the rest of my life, this i am sure of. i will read the first book out loud to my children just like my parents did for me. i'll have my english set (they're pretty worn out from forty-four reads, let me tell you) and i'll have my spanish set. and i will carry the magic with me forever, because harry potter is a part of who i am. if you were ever a fan, harry is a part of you too. and that doesn't have to end just because you went to the movie theater and bought an overpriced ticket.

if we keep it alive, harry will never end.  and that's really all i have to say.

magic never dies.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

el caliz de fuego. you know, with voldemort.

it is an absolute crime that i have not blogged about harry potter.

i have some reasons for this.

1. i am extremely resentful that i could not see the movie at midnight like the rest of harry's devoted fans. i consider myself one of the most devoted.

2. i have been way too busy to blog about harry potter, what with work, class, and being a real person.

3. because of this business, i haven't been able to read a harry potter book in almost a month.

i am not kidding when i consider myself one of the most loyal harry potter fans. i also constitute being a fan as something slightly different than most normal people.

i do own all seven books and all six movies. still waiting on seven part one. never got it for my birthday.

i do NOT own harry potter lego sets. i do not constantly tweet about harry potter. i do not own fun harry potter artifacts (i do own quidditch through the ages and fantastic beasts and where to find them, though). i do not throw harry potter parties. i don't have a wand. i have not had the luxury of going to the wizarding world of harry potter. i don't even have fake harry potter glasses.

but i am telling you the one hundred percent truth when i say this:

i have read every single harry potter book 44 times.

forty-four times seven is three hundred and eight. that's three hundred and eight harry potter books i have in my brain. i've had nearly twelve years to accomplish this. this means i've read the seventh book forty-four times in four years. you do that math. that's reading that book eleven times in a year. i'm surprised i've had time to do this. but i manage it.

now, i might not be able to tell you specific page numbers and say, "oh blah blah is chapter five" (i can do that a bit) but i can give you teeny weeny insignificant details about everything. EVERYTHING. when you read a book forty-four times, you tend to know it pretty well. i'm pretty good at quoting stuff. i know connections to just about everything. that guy who dribbles eggs down his front in the fourth book and karkaroff yells at him? yeah, his name is poliakov. those two kids that snape yells at at the yule ball? they're named fawcett and stebbins (surnames!) and they're both in ravenclaw. the fawcetts couldn't get tickets to the quidditch world cup. too bad for them. all of those things float around my brain. i can access it all and kick your butt in a harry potter knowledge bowl. fear me.

so, i might not have a wand and dress up and go out and see the movies at midnight, but i have invested three hundred and eight book readings to this series. i don't even want to contemplate how many hours of reading those books that is. so. much. harry. potter.

and you know what, i don't get sick of reading them. i really don't. and i swear to god, every time i read them, i find something new. something i missed. something my mind hasn't absorbed yet.

but this is where my blog is really going while you're sitting here thinking, "oh my god this girl is NUTS" (and i totally am, don't get me wrong). this is where my blog is really headed. i just had to lead up to it, and i feel like i'll have done more leading than actually blogging about my subject because i just suck at blogging.

on thursday i acquired harry potter and the goblet of fire. IN SPANISH. (for a bit. it's borrowed. and that's the fourth book. you know, with the triwizard tournament and voldemort coming back to life. and you know... the goblet of fire.)

harry potter y el caliz de fuego.

now, i have only had one and a half spanish classes. i only know six of the eleven spanish tenses, and i really only know two of them well, maybe two and a half. so how on earth could i possibly read the goblet of fire in spanish?

because i know it so damn well in english, that's how.

i have absolutely plowed through this book in spanish, and it's helping with my pronunciation terrifically. i've been reading WITHOUT the english book on hand or my spanish dictionary, so i'm doing this completely solo. i'm not going to lie, i don't know half the words or the verbs, but i understand exactly what's going on because i can close my eyes and read it in english. i can close my eyes, see the page in english, and read it because hell, i've read the book forty-four times.

if i hadn't had this much extensive harry potter knowledge, i would be completely lost.

reading harry potter y el caliz de fuego is getting me spanish credit. i spend an hour a week immersing myself in the language, and now that i have this, i've spent a good five hours reading in spanish. i'm discovering new tenses. i'm rediscovering old ones that i'm not that great at. i'm learning new verbs. and i'm laughing because it's just really funny to read "la casa de hufflepuff" and "la tres escobas" to drink "ceverza de mantequilla." yeah, that's going to the three broomsticks to drink butterbeer. which by the way, is delicious, they sell it at the cafe in my college library.

so. i am over halfway done with harry potter y el caliz de fuego. when i finish it, i will debate as to whether this counts as my forty-fifth time through the book. i think i'm going to go with yes.

i have also decided that by the time i graduate from college, i will own every single harry potter in spanish. and i will read them all. and then my bilingual children can decide whether the want to read harry potter in english or in spanish.

and you thought my lion king addiction was bad.

hell yes.

Monday, July 11, 2011

macaroni y queso.

i'm a real person for another week. this time my brother isn't coming to ruin it; i am completely on my own for six whole days.

my mother is going to call me in twenty minutes, and she's going to ask me how my day went. then she'll ask me about my macaroni and cheese. i am debating telling her the truth.

this blog is the truth.

remember that blog i had in my june go! challenge where i said i liked to bake but sucked at it? this is almost the same except for one thing: i DON'T like to cook. and i suck at it.

i got home from mi clase de espanol at approximately three oh eight in the afternoon. i had until three forty-four to mix up homemade macaroni and cheese and time bake it in the oven for my dinner. it would be easy. it was a simple recipe that's been in my family for what seems like centuries. the oven will do the dirty work while i went to physical therapy and got back stability. this seemed flawless.

i could not for the life of me find the macaroni and cheese dish. see, my mother is one of those people who uses specific dishes for specific entrees, so this is what i'm used to. macaroni is baked in the macaroni dish. that's how it had to be. but i couldn't find the damn thing. i opened every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen and it was gone! so i grabbed a dish that looked kind of like it and sprayed it with pam because nobody wants to be like that unfortunate lady in the pam commercial.

i then could not find macaroni noodles. i settled for mini shells, but that didn't equate to two and a half cups. so i rooted through the pantry and found lasagna. and more lasagna. and you guessed it, MORE LASAGNA! so i settled for some multicolored bow tie noodles.

from there i sprayed them with butter spray because we don't do stick butter in my house. then i poured out a bunch of salt because my mother never measures things like that. then i dumped in my entire bag of cheese and poured my four cups of milk.

halfway through pouring the milk, i realized that my dish was too small. oops.

i dumped my soggy, cheesey noodley mess into another dish (the lasagna dish, of course) and finished pouring the milk. i then stuck the dish into the oven and spent ten minutes figuring out how to set the oven to bake my creation for an hour and a half starting at four fifteen.

then i left for physical therapy.

on the way home from physical therapy, i was listening to the lion king sountrack (what else?!) and thinking about how awesome my macaroni and cheese was going to be. i was still slightly in spanish mode, so i kept saying "macaroni y queso!" in an excited, spanish voice. it was fun.

until i realized that i had left the dish in the wicker basket. that wicker basket was now sitting in the oven and had been baking for almost an hour.

i turned onto my street in a full blown panic, expecting my house to be in ruins, or at least to have smoke pouring out of the kitchen window. i ran into the kitchen expecting smoke and the wrath of god, but the wicker basket was a survivor. i grabbed the one oven mit i could find and got that macaroni out of the oven.

the cheese was melting. the milk was bubbling. that dish was hot. i'm afraid of ovens. and hot things. i'm not sure how i got it out of there.

i then spent ten minutes with that damn dish on my counter trying to get it out of the protective wicker basket. i tried using a knife. i used a variety of oven mits. i burned myself. i said something i never ever allow myself to say. i slopped half boiling milk and a few noodles onto the counter.

but i got the dish out after ten minutes of cursing, swearing, and sweating.

i put that dish back into the oven and let it bake for the rest of the time. then i gave it another ten minutes. because that's how long it took me to get that damn dish out of the damn wicker basket. i've said that three times. TEN MINUTES.

my story has a happy ending, thank goodness. my macaroni and cheese (macaroni y queso!) was absolutely delicious. it was fully cooked and extra cheesey. it was so beautiful i took a picture on my phone because i cannot find my real camera. i ate happily.

i am seriously debating telling my mother this when she calls in the next ten-ish minutes. it's a very funny story (those are never funny at the time though, are they?) and i enjoy telling it. but i can see the absolutely horrified expression on her face when i say, "oh yeah, and then i left the dish in the wicker basket and it baked for an hour."

she will say, "YOU ALMOST BURNED DOWN THE HOUSE."

baking really isn't my thing. but it's so much more my thing than cooking.

to my future husband: will bake you cakes every day if you ask me to. but you better make me dinner.

long live macaroni and cheese. the homemade kind.

one of these days, my meals will look like this.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

oh, school bus.

i ran a red light today.

okay. i know what you're thinking. i had that blog forever ago about how everybody's a terrible driver except for you and only you have the perfect speed. and how i consider myself to be a good driver and get extremely emotional over texting and driving.

i know.

this is the part where i justify some stuff.

first off. i was not speeding. and i was paying attention. i was sitting in a left turn lane behind a school bus.

here in lies my first question. on my way to take my first quiz of second semester spanish, why am i sitting behind a school bus in a left turn lane? it's noon. on july sixth. i feel like school buses should be parked in the bus lot behind my former high school and that bus drivers should either be a) sleeping b) eating lunch or c) partying it up. i feel like bus drivers, especially the cool old lady ones that are rather rotund, are seriously awesome at parties.

more justification.

i was running late. i got distracted while eating my cheese bagel (i have an addiction) for lunch. last night my swim team hosted a meet and i was there for a good... four hours. it was hot. it was so hot that i got nauseated and had to take off my back brace. that thing just soaks up sunlight and stores it like a happy paper bag. my feet were hurting. i dropped the entire lifeguard stand (about a hundred pounds) on my left foot. it's currently swollen and in pain and i'm icing it. i didn't study before i went to bed. i didn't have the energy.

thus, after work this morning and a nice shower, i sat down at my kitchen table and made all the flashcards i promised myself i'd make over the weekend. i love procrastination. about halfway into my studying of the uses of "tan ... como" and "tanto ... como" (insert noun or adverb here ... ) i ate my cheese bagel, my almost entire pint of blueberries (that's an addiction too) and my tortilla chips. then i kept studying and studying and my parents came home. then they quizzed me on my flashcards like good parents. then i had to brush my teeth and find a shoe to stuff my swollen left foot into.

thus, i left late. and i had sat through this left turn arrow behind this gigantic school bus, numbered 211, for two light cycles already and i was impatient. i was not going to be late for my quiz. i have a fear of being late. i despise being late. i am a very punctual person.

this does not give me the right to drive like a maniac. but i didn't, i swear!

i do not have super powers, therefore i was not able to use special x-ray vision to see through the bus. maybe if i had been driving my dad's thirteen year old minivan (the crimson avenger!) i could have, but my car is pretty teeny. while listening to the national, i sat behind this bus and figured it was maybe second in the queue to go.

i decided, after sitting through this light twice, that the bus was far enough ahead that i would just go. the light would probably be green turning yellow. it might turn red while i was in the intersection, and i would be okay with that. the only thing around that looked incriminating was a taxi. running yellow lights happens. we all do it. sometimes it's unavoidable.

when that bus moved forward, i moved forward with it. i jammed my head to my music. i tailed that bus. i was going to follow it through. the light would still be green.

that light was pretty damn red by the time i got a look at it.

i zoomed right through it.

at first i was mortified. i was exactly like that driver that i always called an asshole when they decided that running a light at a turn light was a decent thing to do. now i was that asshole.

as soon as i called myself an asshole, i laughed incredibly hard. i was an asshole. and i was going to enjoy it.

i don't really think there's a point to this blog. i didn't decide to write it until i was driving home from work fifteen minutes ago, and i ran this light at noon. i feel like there should be a moral lesson or something. maybe i should feel bad about running a red light. the truth is, i really don't. i was sick of sitting behind that school bus and i would be damned if i sat through that light cycle another time.

i made it to my spanish quiz on time, if you were wondering. it was the hardest spanish quiz i've ever had. i forgot all the spanish holidays and that part was not matching. it was fill in the blank without a word bank.

but boy did i ace the "tanto ... como" part.

post script: texting and driving story of the day. on my way home from work the lady i was sitting next to was texting at the stop light. i can understand this. i've been guilty of at least looking at my phone during this boring minute and a half of red light halting. but when she had the green arrow and she kept texting and texting and texting... well. that makes me slightly angry.

for the win: it is now illegal to text and drive in indiana. reinforcement power!