Waahahahahahaha!!

Oh man, you guys. Oh MAN this is funny.

Seriously. Go watch it.

Hee hee hee

hee hee

Bwahahahaha!

Ugh =

Any day you've already done eleven hours of school work by 3:30pm.

And did I mention that my ice scrapper BROKE as I tried to clean the solid sheet of ice off my car this morning? Yes, yes, it did.

And that I apparently haven't learned my lesson, because the new jeans that I just bought for $8 on black Friday are ALSO sliding down on a regular basis? It's called a "belt," Margaret. Or a pair of jeans that, what do they call that?, oh yes, FITS. Sheesh. :)

OH! And that I'm writing an abstract for a conference that my two bosses and I will hopefully get to go to next May? And that it's in DC??? :) :) :) :) :) (The conference, not the abstract.) And that I don't mind writing, but it's almost finals week and I have three, oh, make that four other papers to write and I want to be done with this abstract but I also don't want to embarrass myself by sending a half-baked one to these profs?

And that I'm getting sick? You can blame this post on the Sudafed.

I found my local Justin!!

And just like the original Justin was when I first met him, he's a cute little 18-yr-old, pure and cheerful and good and happy and...what's that one word that means something like "really chatty and social and charming and good at talking to people?" Gregarious.

And he is now aware of his new status as my local Justin. And oh, he totally gets it. Witness the conversation we had last night at the Institute building, where there was a potluck before the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. I was chatting with my new Justin, we'll call him E, since that's his initial, right before Bishop and Sister N were getting ready to leave and give E a ride home:

Me: I just want to tell you that you remind me of the little brother of a good friend of mine, and it makes me really happy.
E (not bitterly, just observing): I think I'm the ward's little brother. Everybody tells me that I remind them of their little brother.
Me: Well, you remind me of Justin, the little brother of my good friend, Josh, and they are both my dear friends. So it's not like you're my little brother [and I made a motion like I was patting a small child on the head], it's more like...you're my Justin.
E: Well, if I'm your Justin, let me give you a hug.

And he did.

See?? He totally gets it!!

It's been a busy couple of weeks...

I mean, how could you expect me to get my school work done when I was so busy choreographing and practicing and making costumes for this?!

(This entertainment was brought to you by Elise, who said, "One might wonder why I don't have a job...until one receives links to dancing elves. Then the mystery is solved.")

Welcome to my psyche.

I am on campus, and somewhere in the building, someone is playing really cheery polka-y Christmas music. Loudly. Two songs, again and again and again. I think I might go insane. Or home.

Except that last night my upstairs neighbor's two dogs barked for MORE THAN AN HOUR while I was trying to do some reading for class. Yes, I timed them. And yelled, "Shut yer dogs up!" at the ceiling.

Yesterday while I was getting ready for school I had these two songs in my head:
1) "Zero population," from that monstrosity, "Saturday's Warrior"
2) "I'm an ordinary man," from "My Fair Lady"
So yes, I was stuck with combinations like, "She'll have a large bognarian [??] mother, with a voice that shatters glass" and "zero population is the answer my friend, without it, the rest of us are doomed!"
I have no explanation for that.

I also had one of those between-hitting-the-snooze-button-every-9-minutes dreams in which Ron told me that Chad was leaving the next day to move to Columbia to play soccer. I was not surprised that his mad soccer skillz would allow him to do that, merely sad that I wouldn't get to see him before he left.

AND - I have plane tickets - I'll be heading back to the land of my family on 17 Dec, and I will be there for a WHOLE MONTH!!

So please, Chad, or anyone else, don't move to Columbia before I get to see you.

I'm totally caving to materialism. But just for this post.

Ok, people, I need boots. And guess what?! Daring Young Mom is having a give-away on her blog from a SHOW COMPANY, and they make BOOTS! And if I link to the contest, like right here, for example, then I can get entered TWICE in the drawing!

So there you go. Check out her contest, and the boots I will get if I win. :) :)

P.S. Did I mention that it snowed last night? :) :)

I think I'm really funny and it's late at night. And if you think those two statements are not connected then you don't know me. Or my blog title.

So I just got this email from my older sister:

Subject line: facebook

you need to get on!! there is a [ward from my home stake] friends group and they want to get together and someone was looking for you to organize a get-together:) Plus, there is an awesome picture of [that one guy] taking off a garter from way up on [that one girl]'s leg--hee hee!

And I started to write back to her, and then the profound truths listed in the title of this post hit me, and so you all get to read my reply, you lucky internets, you.

OK, but I REALLY don't need something ELSE to keep me from getting my work done, and you KNOW I am OCD enough that I would have to connect with everyone I've ever met, including those people from my alma mater who I never actually met but saw them walking on campus all the time, and because I spent SO MANY YEARS on that campus I'm sure they must have been in my ward at some point, so I introduce myself, and then sure enough, we don't know each other and now I look like a weird stalker freak. (And yes, that happened to me about a month and a half ago.)

sigh.

I feel like I'm the only person in the free world NOT on facebook. And I take a wee bit of pride in that. Kind of like I took a wee bit of pride in high school about not wearing make up, and I've tried to start wearing make up now several times, and I own some nice Mary Kay eyeshadow that I have been taught to apply by a friend who always looks REALLY nice with her make up, and I just don't do it.

So let's just say that facebook is the Mary Kay eyeshadow of my web presence.

But secretly I'm really flattered that those fun people want me to plan a get-together. And I'll probably do it.

Good thing my gloves and scarf are red...

...'cause I'm going to the football game tomorrow!! (And our school color is red. Just in case you didn't get why that would matter.) I'm really excited!! I wanted to go to one of the games, but couldn't afford the time or the money to get season tickets, and turns out...when you go to a Big 10 school, you, um, can't just "pick up" a ticket to a home football game. It doesn't work that way in the big leagues. :) But my fun friend J got tickets from her work and invited me to go with her - WOOHOO!!

And also - why do I stay up this late when I'm not being productive?

But sometimes my "to do" list gets overwhelming, and apparently all I can do is eat my $1.96 Totinos pizza and two servings of ice cream for dinner (that's what they call a "balanced diet") and read blogs until all hours of the night.

Oh wait! I got up at 5:30am to do homework today--suddenly my inability to function makes sense! When I have to actually function that early I later get past the point of being coherent, and then become incapable of being proactive about progress, such as turning off my computer and going to bed. It's awesome.

But the reason I got up that early was to prep for my group meeting, which went well! AND I got my car back after hitching rides for the last three weeks, and the guy replaced the fuel pump and the timing belt for FREE and only asked me to pay for the parts, and I am SO GRATEFUL!!

And tomorrow is Super Saturday, and I'm making - oh! I almost said it! I'm making Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews. :) Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise! (Since they are all under the age of 11 and none of them read this blog. Or know it exists. Or would care if they DID know. Or can read. Just kidding - several of them can read.)

Whoa nellie. Time for bed. Look at me all being proactive and getting my tush out of my chair and stuff!

Why You Should Use Your Brain When You Read Statistics: A Case Study

So I got my electric bill over the weekend, and it was $23.83, down from $27 last month. (Woohoo! That's 3 Frosties!!) (It would have been 4 Frosties, but they raised the price on the 99 cent Frosty - now it's $1.19.) (Which totally defeats the purpose of the 99 cent Frosty, if you ask me.) And there was a little blurb on the bill saying that I could sign up for the "budget payment plan," which equalizes your payments over the whole year, based on the average billing amount, so that you can avoid spikes in the bill and plan your monthly budget more effectively, blah blah blah, and my monthly payment would be...$15.

Uh, now, I know I'm not a math major, but unless there have been MAJOR changes in the way numbers work since I last calculated a mean, $15 is not the average of $27 and $23.83. Even though I am not a math major, I do know that $15 < $23.83, so on the theory of, "gosh! wouldn't it be nice if $15 WAS the average of $27 and $23.83?!" (just THINK how many Frosties I could afford!!) I called the electric company to check up on it. And sure enough, they got that amount by averaging electricity costs in the apartment for the last 6 months...during which the apartment was unoccupied for several months. So yeah, $27 and $23.83 and a couple of $0's? They do average out to $15. And when they went back to check the time period during which the apartment was occupied, the average was $40. And I know that $23.83 < $40, so I'll just stick with paying my actual bill, thank you very much.

Hmph.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one...

...who makes a fool of herself sometimes.

Thanks for sharing, Josh. :)

Grad school makes you dumb.

I am living proof.

And you thought the your-pants-are-loose-because-you-don't-fill-them-up-anymore and the I-believe-everything-I-read-on-the-internet moments were bad...

Epiphany

So it just occurred to me that perhaps the reason that I've had to hike up my favorite (only) blue jeans every two seconds during the last couple of weeks is that I've lost weight.

Yup. Just figured that out.

Well, they never said you had to be smart to be in grad school.

Oh, wait - they did?

Dang.

If it seems like it's too good to be true...

OK, fine, so I'm a sucker. And a romantic. But is that news to anyone, really?!

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Moving on...

There is no subject for this post.

So my brain is a little

Yeah, that's as far as that sentence got. Reminiscent of another time when I stopped partway through a thought. No, I'm not saying that my brain was a demon.

Hey - another of my hilarious cousins started blogging! Check her out!

And my sister posted about something important - Yes on Prop 8!

And I'm just a leeeeettle obsessed with this right now. I know, we've been over this before, but if I can live vicariously through my curling iron, surely I'm allowed to be really thrilled about someone else's romance. Seriously, grab a cup of hot cocoa and a fuzzy blanket, cozy up on the couch, and start at the beginning. It's a good story. And then you'll get addicted like me and keep on checking for updates 9 million times a day, when digging up citation information and transcribing interviews (1 hr to do FIVE MINUTES of an interview - you have GOT to be kidding me!!) just isn't puttin' bubbles in your milk anymore.

And speaking of milk, did you notice my new profile picture? Here, have a closer look.


So I went to the Minnesota State Fair over Labor Day. This is one of the many fun things I did at the end of the summer about which I have not yet blogged. Like the show in Chicago. And the concert. And the family vacation where I did not lose the pictures but did get to hang out with some of the people in the tractor picture. Oh, and France 2007, which was not at the end of last summer, but which is yet another cool thing about which I have not yet blogged.

But I digress.

So they do this cool thing at the Minnesota State Fair, where you spend $1 for a cup, such as the one I'm holding in the above picture, and then you can get free milk all day long. (And a week later, as long as you bring back your cup, right, R? :) )

DOESN'T THAT JUST SOUND AWESOME?!?!

:) :)

OK, but really, it's pretty cool. And you can get chocolate or white milk. And it's actually quite hilarious, because, um, everybody's doing it. Really. A couple of the images that I hope I never forget from that fair were of really tough looking guys, or really punk teenagers, standing around...drinking milk. And eating chocolate chip cookies, because someone had the brains to say, "Where there is milk, there must needs be cookies," and so put up a cookie booth. $16 for a plastic bucket of chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, um, we stuck with milk.

And we drank a lot of it. I'm holding up four fingers because I'm just then drinking my fifth cup of milk for the day. Yes, four fingers for my fifth cup of milk. Apparently my brain was a demon that day, too.

The most human-flesh-colored food I have ever eaten*

Salsa scrambled eggs. Mix in half a cup of salsa for every 3 eggs you scramble. It's a yummy variation on scrambled eggs, but the color is a little...disturbing.

* What? You don't keep track of that? That's so weird.

On doing dishes

If you eat today's lunch with the same spoon that you used to eat yesterday's lunch, you too could have curry-flavored apple crisp.

I am drug free, and so is my 5-year-old niece.

Apparently she came from from school wearing a bracelet that proclaimed that she was drug free, but when her mommy asked her if she knew what that meant, she had no idea.

Aah, the power of education.

I, however, KNOW what it means that I am drug free - it means that I have not taken any pain medication since 2:45am Saturday morning - woohoo!

What, you haven't either? Ok, fine, but here's why mine is significant:

So I went to the emergency room at about 12:45 am on Monday morning. My left ear had been hurting for a couple of days, and Sunday night when the pain woke me up, my BFF ibuprofen helped me get back to sleep, but Monday night - no such luck. I called the Nurse Hotline to which I have access with my health insurance, and after ascertaining that I did not have a "foreign object" in my ear (and how could you tell if it was foreign, you ask? by the accent, my friend, by the accent), she said that "the protocol suggests that you seek medical attention within the next 4 hours." I'm not a math major, but 12:30am + 4 hours = the middle of the night. So after sitting on my living room floor crying for a few minutes (no couch to sit on, as of yet) (and no, that's not why I was crying), I decided that this was why they invented emergency rooms, and so I went.

The ER was fast (read: "empty") and by 2:15am I was home with amoxicillin for the infection and vicoden for the pain of the partially ruptured eardrum. (The PA told me they'd give me amoxicillin for the infection, and then he looked at his watch (1:30 am) and then at me, and said, "And since you're here now, we'll give you something for the pain, too." I about fell off the hospital bed with gratitude.) The PA that gave me the vicoden told me that it would make me, and I quote, "drowsy," and asked how long I would be able to sleep the next day. I said that I had class at 9:30, and he looked at me like I was an idiot, so I said, very insincerely, "...but I'm not afraid to miss class." I mean, come on, I know I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to pain, but miss class?!?! Whatever, dude. Give me the drugs and let me go home. College students go to class feeling "drowsy" all the time.

Well, he was right about "drowsy," if what he meant was "totally incapacitated." Oooh, the nausea, the nausea!! When I got up at 9:30am and called my boss to tell her I would not be coming to work, I had a hard time staying vertical long enough to call her. She was like, "Uh, I'm going to hang up before you throw up!" They had prescribed hydrocodone, which I took as prescribed until that afternoon, when I decided that if they said, "take it on a full stomach" and the taking emptied the stomach, that was not acceptable. Then I called around until my doctor (who I've never met) told her nurse to tell me to stop taking the hydrocodone (duh! yeah, I maybe could have thought of that on my own if I hadn't already been totally out of it!), and to resort instead to my BFF ibuprofen. LOTS of it.

So I alternated ibuprofen and Tylenol, as even prescription-strength ibuprofen didn't kill the pain long enough for me to make it from one dose to the next without being in considerable pain. And this worried me, because the PA at the ER had told me that the antibiotic would take 24-48 hours to kick in, and I assumed that that meant that I would then be able to reduce my pain meds. But no. Whether the amoxicillin kicked in or not, I was taking full doses of pain medication all through Friday. (I'm going to the doctor this afternoon to make sure that the healing is proceeding as it should.)

Side note: After walking around for a couple of days cupping my hand over my left ear (the pressure helped alleviate the pain a little), I laughed outloud when I realized where I had seen people doing that before--on trains in Romania! There is this old superstition in Romania about "curent" - a draft or blast of air, or a cross-breeze. The idea is that you don't want a breeze to blow "through" your head--that is not good for you. So, for example, you can have the two right side windows of a cab open at the same time, but not both front windows - the cross-breeze is bad for you. So we'd be riding on trains in the middle of the summer, and when we'd open the window to the train AND the door to the compartment, any old Romanians around would cover their ears, and often their whole heads!, to avoid the badness that would come with the "curent." Apparently they didn't hold with our feeling that surely any "badness" would be more manageable than the discomfort of suffocating heat and still (and usually smelly) air. We now return to the regularly scheduled program.

And as fascinating as you find your field of study, throbing pain in your ear is a LEEEETTLE distracting. I was fine until I'd try to sit in one place to read (oh wait, that's all grad students DO!), and then all I would think was, "language learning...PAIN...Contrastive analysis hypothesis...can I take more medication yet?...midterm next week on this stuff!...PAIN."

Yeah, it was pretty rockin' awesome.

So when I woke up in a GREAT mood on Saturday morning, it took me about 15 seconds to figure out that the reason I was so cheerful was because my first thought was not "PAIN." What a glorious feeling that was!

And so gentle readers, I have now been drug free for two and a half days, and while I am not pain free, I am so eager to be drug free that I'll put up with the minor pain that kicks in now and then.

And this is already really long, but I have two final thoughts.

First, I really need to not get sick for the next, oh, 5 years. I was comatose for one day, and not good enough to be up to studying and attending class the next day, and I am AMAZED how far behind I got!

Second, I have no idea how an eardrum can be only "partially ruptured." I feel like that's a binary (that word's for you, Jer) condition--an eardrum is either "ruptured" or "not ruptured." Whatever. It hurt A LOT.

Eeep!

Today I got my first paycheck as a grad student TA.

This I do not love about being a student.

First my curling iron, now my parents?!

Yup, they're going in January.

[sighs deeply]

The clothes make the (wo)man

So one thing that I like about being a grad student again is that I get to return to my preferred manner of dress - jeans and hoodies.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Granted, I have a much nicer wardrobe now than I did a year ago, when I started the job that required me to wear "business casual" 5 days a week. And I have discovered that I actually like some of those clothes, and I have been realizing that if I want my professors and fellow students to take me seriously as a scholar, I shouldn't dress like a shlump, but still - put me in a hoodie and I'm a happy girl.

And I was thinking about this last Friday, when I spent all day doing homework and didn't move from my seat for 8 hours. See, I don't have class on Fridays, so I feel even freer on those days to dress in my preferred mode. And I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I hobbled to the bathroom around 8:30pm (yeah, I was a little stiff from 8 hrs of sitting still - I'm getting old, what can I say?!), and had to laugh when I realized what I was wearing:

• the flipflops that I bought in the European country that I visited in 1992, 2001, 2006, and 2007, and plan to visit multiple times in the future
  
• a t-shirt from my alma mater
• a hoodie from the large U.S. city I lived near for the last year
• a baseball cap from the concert I had attended the previous night (which I really need to blog about because it was A.W.E.S.O.M.E.)

So, um, would you like to know about my life? Ask me about my clothes - apparently they define me. :)