Yay for company!

My friend Kelli is in town staying with me for the weekend to go to our mutual friends Emily and Jin's wedding tomorrow.  It's super great seeing her again...it's been two and a half years since we last saw each other, and we can still pick up  right where we left off!  But anyway, it's rude to blog with company, and I'm super exhausted because we stayed up late talking about our lives and whatnot, and so once again I fear I must leave you with a short post.  I fare thee well, until we meet again!

Sleepy

I'm too tired to write something fantastic.  My day included a Greek test, translating massive quantities of Scripture, and a date in the evening.  All of these things (though each was a source of some anxiety) went very well :)

Now goodnight, world.

Good Golly Gosh.

This was a rough day...I'm glad it's over.

Nothing bad happened really, I just felt generally exhausted and sick for much of the day, and had to spend much time studying through these feelings.  Not cool.

The thing that IS cool, though, is that my phone works again!!!  YEAH!!!!!!  If you were unaware, I haven't been able to make or receive calls or texts in my apartment/neighborhood since I got back to Dallas at the end of May, and the AT&T store, a customer service phone call, and two online chat support sessions were all completely useless.  I therefore spent the entire month sitting outside in 110 degree heat by the lake in my neighborhood whenever I had to make a phone call, because that was the only place I could have enough reception to place a call (and I still couldn't receive them).  But now things are better, and I have learned the secret to getting problems fixed quickly with AT&T.

What is the secret, you ask?

I shall share it with you.

The secret, my friends, is befriending the wife of an AT&T Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel, who happens to sit next to you in Greek class and who, when you mention that you are having trouble with your AT&T phone service, is more than happy to pass your information on to her very important husband, who then uses his very important power to tell AT&T to get their act together.  Then, the next day, while you go out for lunch with said Executive's wife and another classmate for a study session, an AT&T Performance Manager will call you (where you luckily have reception) and apologize profusely for the problems you have been experiencing, listen patiently to all the details of your complaint, and will promise to find a solution for you.  You will then have active phone reception in your apartment within 3 hours.

Yeah.  That's the way to get stuff done.  Like my friend said, it's amazing what a phone call from the right person can accomplish...

So, if you do need to call me, you now have a much better chance of me answering the phone :)

busy, Busy, BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm busy.  There's a lot going on this week, both academically and socially.  Today I put myself on a work schedule that I was following fantastically until about 7:30, when it was derailed by getting superglue all over my fingers, thereby forcing me to drive to a friend's apartment to borrow nail polish remover (which also removes superglue, incidentally).  That kind of derailed the schedule, and derailed my motivation.

Happily, before that motivation was derailed, I did get a good amount of stuff done...I just can't seem to get as ahead in my work as I need to...BUT I'm definitely not falling behind, so that's good.

What else can I say?  It's Monday.  Mondays are lame.  And long.

Here's a quick rundown of the week:

-Tuesday: Study, Clean
-Wednesday: Test, Evening Social Outing
-Thursday: Friend arrives in town
-Friday: Wedding
-Saturday: Friend in town
-Sunday: Friend leaves
-Monday: 4th of July festivities (hopefully, unless I need to catch up a lot on studying, which is a very big possibility)

So BUSY!!!!!  And after that, only one more week of Greek, and I'll be on the official summer vacation!  Woot woot!

I'll keep you posted on the week's happenings...

Goodbye, Weekend...

So the weekend draws again to a close.  And this week is going to be BUSY.  In addition to the usual Greek homework/tests/etc., I have a friend coming into town on Thursday to stay with me for four days for a mutual friend's wedding on Friday.  And I have plans for Wednesday evening, so really that leaves me Monday and Tuesday to do a great deal of things, included (but not limited to) cleaning the apartment, going grocery shopping, working ahead on Greek homework as much as possible, do laundry...I have a whole list of stuff, but it's across the apartment from me and I'm really really tired and don't feel like retrieving it, especially when doing so would merely be to prove to you that I have a lot to do.  I'll just trust you to believe me.

I'll leave you for this trailer for "Martian Child", which we watched at my Bible study tonight (we're doing this thing where we watch movies and discuss them.  It's fun).  It was all heartwarming and fantastic.



Goodnight!

Great Day!

Today was great (as the title may imply).

Here is why:

-Pie for breakfast (the benefit of putting off grocery shopping)

-Work/Study at the library with friends in the morning (and being SUPER productive!)

-Fuzzy's Tacos and Monsters, Inc. at friend's apartment for lunch

-Exciting updates in the dating realm...

-Watching 8 episodes of The Big Bang Theory in a row with a friend

-Watching Amelie with friends

-Rearranging my friend's stuff with another friend when she stepped out of the apartment for a phone call...

-Laughing at my friend's 1) lack of recognition, and 2) eventual realization of our prank

So it was a good day!  Looking forward to tomorrow!

Guess What...

Yeah.  I went back to the store and bought the red zebra dress today.  Because it was too good to pass up.

Looking at it again today, and not juxtaposed with all the black and white dresses I was trying on, it seems more wedding-appropriate.  In the small dressing room, it seemed a lot more vibrant and loud.  But now I have two dresses, so it may become the dress I wear to the weddings...thoughts and opinions on which dress may be left in the comments :)

In other news, I spent the evening eating gumbo and watching The Notebook with friends - an evening well-spent, even if that's the saddest movie ever made, ever.  As for the weekend, I'm hoping to get ahead on some Greek translations and clean the whole apartment, and still be able to get together with friends a bit.  We'll see how much of that gets accomplished...hopefully all!

Leave me comments about the dress!  :)

Red Zebras and Weddings

I went dress shopping today.

My lovely friend Emily is getting married to her lovely fiance Jin next Friday, and it was therefore necessary for me to buy something fabulous to wear to the wedding.  The best dress that I currently own is five years old - I wore it to my high school graduation - and even though it still looks great, I figured it was time to have another dress.  But, I've also been more purposeful keeping to a budget lately, and I didn't want to spend a ton of money when I had one that, technically, I could wear.

So I set myself a $20 budget and drove to Ross.

I'd only been to Ross one time before today, and that was with an SUV full of guys whom I'd just met on my summer mission trip to Santa Cruz.  We all needed to buy pillows.  Apparently I was the only girl on the project who hadn't packed a pillow, but all these guys had also forgotten one and so we all went on a pillow-purchasing adventure.  It was awkward, mostly because I get all shy around new people and rarely drive in SUVs full of football-player-esque boys.  Anyway, since living here in Dallas, I've heard several friends talk about how Ross's is a good place to get cheap dresses (it's a store of the TJ Maxx/Marshalls variety), and so I thought I'd check it out.

Sometimes you have to dig for dresses.

The friends were definitely right - walking into the store I was greeted immediately by several long racks of dresses, and set to shopping.  I've dropped a dress size since the beginning of this year (woot!), so I had a lot of options to choose from...it seems like the smaller a size you are, the more things there are in your size.  At least, this has been the case in my experience, where in both hips and feet I have always been above average (one might say I have "excelled" in these areas).  Anyway, after about 15 minutes of digging through the racks, I bopped off to the dressing room with 7 dresses in hand.

Out of these seven dresses, 5 of them didn't work.  Too short, too tight, too professional looking...whatever the problems were, my choice eventually came down to two dresses.

The first of these was a flowy black and cream colored dress in a vintage looking print with a faux-lace look about it, with a boat neck and a black ribbon around the middle, and vertical seams as accents.  It actually looked a lot like a dress that I fell in love with last year while looking for a graduation dress, but which I couldn't afford...so naturally I got all excited when I saw this look-alike dress, and snatched it up.  It fit very well, and was all light and airy and pretty, in that 1920s romantic style kind of way - very wedding appropriate.  And it was marked at $19.99, originally $80.  Two thumbs up.

The second dress was red with a black zebra print and a deep V-neckline, with a black broach at the waist.  I put it on, and was kind of shocked - because I looked HOTT.  That's hott with TWO T's, people.  It was quite possibly the best dress I've ever put on in my life.  It was fitted, but not overly tight, and accented all the right things.  I looked, dare I say, sexy.  But in a classy way.  I looked like the kind of confident attractive movie heroine who all the men fall in love with.  And this dress was only $17.99.

And here I reached my dilemma.

Are red zebra stripes appropriate for a wedding?

Not okay.

I deliberated over this question for a good, long time.  I looked GOOD in that dress, there was no denying it.  If I was going salsa dancing somewhere, or if I was going to a cocktail party or something, it would be absolutely perfect.  But I'm going to a WEDDING.  A wedding is a classy affair, where the focus should be on the bride, and not on a) that hott girl in the red zebra dress or b) that tasteless girl who wore zebra stripes to a wedding.  Furthermore, weddings are places where LOTS of photographs are taken.  I was thinking on the way to the store about wedding portraits, and thinking about how if I was getting married I would go with a classic and elegant dress so that 10 years later I wouldn't look at my photos and only see the most notorious trend of the year (like those wedding dresses from the 80s that look like marshmallows).  Nobody wants to be the unwitting bearer of an unfortunate fashion statement a la Princess Beatrice's hat, wearing something daring and "fashionable" only to regret it later.  Do I want to be the girl who, when Emily and Jin are looking through their wedding pictures in 20 years, gets laughed at because of her oh-so-trendy dress that now looks ridiculous?

Probably not.

As awesome as the dress was, and as amazing as I looked in said dress, the more I pictured myself wearing it at a wedding, the more out of place it seemed in my head.  Besides, the fitted quality of the dress, while making me look absolutely fabulous, was also threatening to give me a heat stroke at a July Dallas wedding.  The other dress, being all flowy and pretty and whatnot, would be a lot cooler in the summer heat.

And so, reluctantly, I handed the red zebra dress over to the dressing room attendant, along with the other five reject dresses, and bought my vintage-style romantic dress.  Maybe not as eye-catching, but definitely lovely.  And I tend to go more toward lovely in my style than toward sexy.  I did briefly consider buying both of the dresses, but since that would double the $20 I'd budgeted, I decided against it.  Besides, the only other place I wear dresses nowadays is to church.  And are sexy red zebra dresses appropriate for church?

That's a whole other debate.

But, the fact remains.  I looked GOOD in that red zebra dress.

The winning dress

Take Greek to Improve Your French

I have my first Greek 2 exam tomorrow, and all I want to do is sit around and watch French versions of Disney songs on YouTube.

(Don't worry, I've already finished studying.)

As the summer has progressed, I've noticed that the more Greek I take, the easier I understand French, both aurally and in written form.  I don't really know why this is...French isn't based on Greek at all - as a Romance language, it traces back to Latin, of course.  And Greek isn't based on Latin...being all ancient and whatnot, it's based on itself.  So there's really no linguistic connection...

I think the reason for this weird French improvement probably stems from the fact that I'm still struggling to understand Greek: it puts things into perspective.  A month ago, French translation was the furthest I ever stretched out of my linguistic comfort zone, but now my Greek classes have taken that comfort zone and expanded it so far that translating French seems like child's play.  My mind seems to keep up with it faster when I hear it spoken, and translating things for work has been less arduous than in the past.  Now that I spend the majority of my time learning another new language, French feels like home.  So that's been a nice little side effect...

Speaking of French and work and things, I talked to my boss on the phone today about new projects planned for our organization.  Exciting!  But, not necessarily so exciting for all of you, so I won't go into great detail.  Basically, strategic planning has been done and we've figured out new ways to incorporate all our separate projects into a cohesive and connected whole (and by we, I mean my boss and the board of directors, I just heard about all this today).  I also got the go-ahead to write a week-long devotional Bible Study for the study abroad spiritual resource website I've been developing, which I'm SUPER excited about...I get to try my hand at writing something spiritual for professional use!  Writing professionally in some manifestation is one of the dreams floating about my head, and I've also played with the idea of writing church education curriculum/devotionals, etc.  Plus, it's an opportunity to apply the stuff I'm studying at SMU to my job.  So two thumbs up for that!

Anyway, most of my day was spent studying and/or putting off studying and/or being overwhelmed by studying.  Typical pre-exam day...with just a bit more French thrown in than usual.

Some of my study diversions, for the French-speaking/Disney-loving readers of the blog...

Schnitzel

I went to a German restaurant with friends for lunch today.  It was all tasty.  I had schnitzel (without noodles), potato pancakes, and red cabbage.  SO GOOD.  German food is something I never eat, so that was a fun new experience!  Also, schnitzel is breaded meat, if anyone is wondering.  Mine was pork schnitzel.  The restaurant we went to is called Kuby's, in Snider Plaza for you Dallas-ites...it's the building that looks blatantly German, with one of those clocks with dancing people outside.  Hard to miss!

So, I would write more, but there's currently a big thunderstorm rolling in and it makes me want to go curl up in my bed under blankets.  So I'm going to do that...and study vocab while I'm at it.  Not to mention, it's 50 minutes past my self-imposed "bedtime."  I haven't been doing so good at that lately...

So until next time friends!

This is just some picture I found on Google, but it looks almost
exactly like what I ate...so there you go.

Things I Did Today

Today was a better day than yesterday...ironically, it was kind of fun to be back in class.  I do better when I have a purpose, and when I have social contact.

Anyway, nothing of great consequence happened today, although the following events took place...

-Passed the halfway point of the summer term

-Took a much-needed nap

-Watched Bridget Jones Diary


-Researched news headlines for work

-Talked to my mom on the phone

-Struggled through the Greek subjunctive/infinitive moods (it took me a full 3 years to master the French subjunctive, let's hope Greek goes a bit faster)

-Ate crepes

-Watched The Bachelorette (and cringed a lot).  The more I watch that show the more glaring and painful the contrived-ness of it becomes.

-Killed the BIGGEST SPIDER OF MY LIFE (amongst much screaming)!!!!!!!!!

-Laughed hysterically at an awkward childhood photo that my sister posted on Facebook

And that's about it for today!

One of those days...

Today was not the best day of my life.

Have you ever had one of those days that just feels off?  Today was one of those days for me.  It started off with waking up from a weird dream that involved narrowly escaping death by earthquake (but still being able to hear the screams of those who didn't escape it), and then narrowly escaping death by drowning as a friend drove her car into a flooded river, and we had to swim out the sunroof to get out of the car.  It was one of those dreams that you wake up from and the emotions of it stick with you...even though you know it wasn't real.  Not a good way to start the day.

Being depressed and uneasy therefore from the very start of the day, I elected not to go to church, but instead to listen to a sermon podcast on my laptop.  I just didn't feel like going to church alone (like always).  So I had "church" on my couch while eating a bowl of cereal.  A little while later I decided to make chocolate chip pancakes...this was another spectacular failure, as the end result was more like chocolate/batter globs than actual pancakes.  At least they still tasted good.  In any case, I did manage to set the smoke alarm off three times in the course of the pancake failure.  After eating one of the globs and watching a bit of TV, I decided to go back to bed and sleep for an hour, and then start the day over.

Almost two hours later, I woke up, and didn't feel any more awesome than I did before the sleep scheme.  Essentially, I spent the entire day watching TV, feeling depressed and sad and just generally "off."  I didn't get anything done until I finally started my my Greek homework around 6:30.  Paid work didn't happen, unfortunately.  I also spent a fair part of the day being melancholy and mopey about not being with my Dad on Father's Day.  Essentially, my bad day was a result of loneliness and cabin fever.

It was just sort of a bad day.  Ready for tomorrow.

Peeling Grapes in the Name of Pie

"Maybe I'll make a pie tonight...," said the foolish girl.

Yeah, that would be me.

It was approximately 6:30, and while I wasn't yet hungry for dinner I also wasn't doing much of anything worthwhile and thought that I might as well make a pie in the meantime before I ate dinner in about 45 minutes or so.  A good way to pass some time, and then I could eat pie.  It's a win-win situation.

Earlier this morning, I had decided to try my hand at making a grape pie, like my grandpa once made.  I mentioned this in an earlier blog post, but I really liked that pie (all my grandpa's pies, really), and I've wanted to recreate it now that I own a pie pan.  Making a grape pie seemed like an extra serendipitous decision, since the bag of grapes I bought at the store this week were running a bit sour on their own.  Might as well add a bunch of sugar to them in pie-form.  The recipe was straightforward enough, and after a quick jaunt to the store to buy pie crust and oats, I had all the ingredients.  Time to make me a pie.

Step one, and I quote, was to: "Squeeze the end of each grape opposite the stem to separate skins from pulp."  Easy enough.  Reading that sentence, it sounds like the inside of the grape will just pop right out of it's little skin shell, and you'll be done in no time.  

Yeah.  Not so much.

Instead, I spent about 45 minutes peeling grapes.  I don't know if you've ever peeled grapes, but it is not an easy task.  Each one takes just about 30 seconds or so to peel, but when you have 2 lbs of grapes, the time adds up.  Furthermore, grapes don't particularly lend themselves to being peeled - by the time I was finished there was grape juice EVERYWHERE, including, but not limited to, my eyes, my forehead, my hair, my shirt, my shoulder, my arms, the counter, the sides of the bowl, the nearby coffee pot...it was a bit chaotic.

Finally, I had my prize: a bowl of grape skins, and a pot of skinless grapes.

Victory.

While I stood there peeling the grapes, thinking about how redundant and endless the task seemed to be, I was reminded of my Prayer and Spirituality class last semester.  We talked a lot in that class about historical spiritual figures, like Brother Lawrence (a French Carmelite monk) and Thich Nhat Hanh (a Buddhist monk), who had mastered the art of contemplative prayer, or practicing the "miracle of mindfulness."  Both of them cooked a lot, and both of them were really adamant about how mindless activities are perfect opportunities for meditation.  Thich Nhat Hanh went on in his book for about 20 pages about how "when you're cutting the onions, you must be cutting the onions", and not jumping on to the next thing.  I think you could easily exchange "peeling the grapes" for "cutting the onions" in that sentence.  Once I got past the annoying realization that my "quick" pie-making adventure was going to be very time consuming, it was actually a really good time of thinking.  I tend to be very technology-oriented when I'm just hanging around my apartment, and always have my laptop or my TV on to cover the silence and pass the time.  And even though I did have music playing, it was unusual for me to spend a prolonged amount of time just in personal thought, with no distractions.  I probably ought to do more of that.

Back to the pie, the rest of the recipe went by very quickly: boil the grape pulp, mix it together with the skins and pie-filling-esque ingredients (sugar, flour, lemon juice, salt), and dump it in a pie shell (I was actually pretty bad at rolling out the pie crust).  Then I whipped up a topping of oats, brown sugar, flour, and butter, and sprinkled it on the top, and popped it in the oven for 35 minutes.

And let me tell you...that is one TASTY pie.  It's SO good.  Like, seriously.  I was a little bit discouraged when I took it out because the edges were burnt, but the pie itself is fantastic.  And, since this is my first real made-from-scratch pie (crust excluded), I was pretty proud.  As usual, here are some photos...I'm starting to get better at this whole cooking thing!

Pie with filling, pre-baking

Completed Pie, with Topping, pre-baking

The finished pie!  The edges are burnt, but the filling was perfect!

"Slice" of the pie...it may be an ugly piece, but it was SO delicious

This has been a good week of cooking adventures, between the crepes, Mahi Mahi, and now my grape pie!  I've been eating GOOD this week!

And since I've been eating good, I also did some Wii Fit stepping tonight while watching 500 Days of Summer.  Because, you know.  I DID bring a lot of pie into the house...

"Can I just have the one Mahi, because I'm not that hungry?"

I made Mahi Mahi for dinner.

The recipe I had called for flounder or sole fillets, but oddly enough the store didn't seem to sell these very generic-sounding fish (at least not in the frozen variety), but had Mahi Mahi in abundance.  Since my recipe was simply for "Oven Fried Fish Fillets", I figured that fish was fish and went for the Mahi Mahi, along with a package of Pacific Cod to stretch one recipe into several meals.

Happily, I was very pleased with the finished result...

Here's something that is true about me:  I LOVE fish.  I love seafood in general, really.  Yet I very rarely cook my own seafood.  I will probably make this recipe a lot in the future, though, because it was super easy - just coating a piece of fish with low-fat mayonnaise, dredging it in a bread crumb-parsley-paprika mixture, and baking it for 12 minutes.  There, now you can go make it too.  It's also a good recipe because it mainly uses stock ingredients and you can make it in individual servings...finding such recipes are huge victories for me, a single woman living on a budget.  Tonight I went ahead and baked the whole package (two fillets), but I'm saving the other Mahi for later.  (House Bunny reference, anyone?)

Besides my cooking adventures (which were really not all that adventurous), I had a fantastically lazy day.  I survived my 8:30am Greek I final with success and was back to my apartment by 10:00 - an exciting accomplishment, since I'm generally in class until 12:30 every day.  Since I'm starting Greek II on Monday (and therefore still have much homework over the weekend), finishing the first term is rather anticlimactic.  Still, in the name of post-finals celebration, I named today my vacation day, and spent it making hummus, napping for 3 hours, doing some laundry, watching A Goofy Movie, The Secret Garden, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and just generally de-stressing.  The only work I did all day was the paid kind, and that mostly just consisted of responding to emails from people looking for a church to attend in France.  Yay for mini-vacations!

It's kind of surreal that I'm halfway through the summer term...it's one of those phenomenons where the days pass slowly but the weeks pass quickly.  Only three more weeks until the real vacation starts!

Final Prep

Before we get going on the actual post, I'd just like to point out that a Nutella and Banana Crepe is the single best study reward snack ever.  The crepe-making adventures of yesterday continue to a tasty influence on my life.

I have my Greek final exam tomorrow!  For those of you keeping score at home, yes, this DOES mean that I've learned an entire semester's worth of Greek over the last three weeks.  I was getting fairly overwhelmed, but as usual I've pulled things together and I am feeling fairly confident about the test tomorrow.  I've made up an abundance of acrostic memory sentences (ie: "Amy Adams drives past avocado stands and abandoned auto parts.")  I think it'll go well; and in any case, I've done well enough on my other exams/quizzes for it to be basically impossible for me to get less than an A in the class.  So it's been a rather stressful day, but it's going to turn out fine.

And that's about all I have to report here from Dallas today.  The weather continues to be hot, my paid work hours continue to be lacking in the face of studying (it will be made up over the weekend), and my guitar has seen more musical action in the last couple of days than it has in the last month as it becomes a stress-relieving tool.  

Looking forward to the weekend!!  

Cooking Adventures: La Crêperie de Celia

Aujourd'hui, je suis plus française qu'hier.

In other words, today I am more French than I was yesterday.

Why, you ask?

Because today I successfully mastered the art of crepe-making.

Heck yes.

As anyone who has spent time in France will tell you, one of the best side effects of la vie francaise is the abundance of crepes that suddenly become available in one's life.  They're the quintessential Parisian street-food, with creperies popping up all over the place luring tourists and natives alike to their windows with enormous jars of Nutella and a batter-strewn pan steaming from its latest creation.  It's like walking by dessert heaven; it would be a sin not to eat one.

Even better than the crepe stands, though, was when my French host mother would serve up crepes for dinner.  My housemates and I dubbed this recurring practice "crepe-night", and would talk in excited anticipation about its imminent arrival and eat as little as possible throughout the day in preparation of the main event.  A three-course affair, crepe night began with a stack of crepes, eggs fried over-easy, flash-fried ham slices, and fried goat cheese rounds, sitting enticingly in the middle of the table waiting for us to assemble our do-it-yourself dinner crepes.  Next came the baguettes with Camembert and Comte cheeses (hello, it's France).  The best part of crepe night, though, was the dessert course, when Madame would reveal from her kitchen all sorts of sweet spreads and fruits and ice cream and bid us build the crepe of our wildest imaginations.  Nutella, bananas, peanut butter, whipped cream, ice cream - they all made an appearance at this course.  On one memorable night, Madame emerged from the kitchen with a tray containing no less than NINE containers of ice cream, ordering us to use up what was left in our crepe fancies.  The evening always concluded with laughter as Madame forced us to eat all the crepes so there wouldn't be leftovers, offering the last crepe from one girl to the next as we protested and begged her to have mercy on our stomachs.  Somehow, I usually ended up with that last crepe...they're rather hard to resist, you know.

Since returning from Paris, I've wanted to be able to recreate Madame's crepe dinners, if on a smaller scale.  My sister and I attempted to make crepes back in the summer of 2009, right after my return to the States, only to be thwarted in our efforts by old pans that had lost their non-stick capabilities, leaving us with a mess of half-cooked crepe pieces and general frustration.  The failure was so spectacular that I never attempted to make crepes again.

Until now.

In my birthday card from my parents, my mother included a crepe recipe that she found in a cooking magazine.  Having vowed to get back into the cooking experimentation over the summer, and having my own kitchen and good-condition frying pan at my disposal, and looking for a cheap and tasty meal, I decided to try my hand at crepe-creation again.  So I turned on some music, heated up the frying pan, and set to work.

The first crepe was about as disappointing as those of the 2009 fiasco.  Small, misshapen, and half-cooked, my prospects weren't looking so good.  But, upon reevaluating the situation, I determined that I hadn't put enough batter in the pan, that the batter hadn't spread around well enough because of its small quantity, and that I hadn't let it cook long enough.  So I got a bigger scoop, plopped the batter in the middle of the pan, twirled it around with somewhat greater finesse, and watched it nervously as it cooked.  I flipped it over a couple times, letting each side brown up a bit, and then slid it onto my cooling pan.

That was my first victorious crepe.

After that, I whipped up about 10 more crepes with ease.  Then I fried up some sliced ham, fried an egg (ironically, that was the part that gave me the most trouble of the whole ordeal), and assembled the two on a crepe before sprinkling it with mozzarella cheese and rolling it up.  Grabbing another crepe, I sliced up half a banana, tossed the pieces in the middle, scooped a bit of Nutella over the top, rolled it up, and placed it next to the other crepe on my plate.  Then I wandered over to my couch and watched TV while enjoying my crepe-victory.

It was basically my best cooking adventure ever.

And now enjoy some photos of the crepe process!

First Crepe vs Second Crepe Comparison

Going well!!

I was all excited...

My crepe bounty

And yes Mom, I will still be able to get my deposit back on my apartment when I move out...the crepe-making adventure didn't cause that much destruction ;)

Normalcy, with a Broadway Tilt.

I find that the repetitive nature of my day-to-day is not good for blog  inspiration...lately my days have been following the predictable pattern of class, procrastination, work, studying, getting overwhelmed, and studying some more.  Not a lot of material there.

It's really remarkable how little I have to write about.

The only thing about today that was slightly unusual is that my day was filled with more Broadway musicals than usual.  I caught up on the Tony Awards on DVR and saw The Book of Mormon win best musical, and then watched The Producers while doing other things.  So, since I really have nothing else to say about today, here's the Tony performance of "I Believe" from The Book of Mormon, and one of my favorite moments from The Producers...enjoy!

Another Day, Another Destiny

That title comes from the song "One Day More" from Les Miserables.  That song (well, really just the first stanza) has kind of become my life motto recently, somewhat unwittingly...it just pops up in my head all the time..."one day more, another day, another destiny, this never-ending road to Calvary..."  Could be a seminary metaphor, yes?

Anyway, today was another day of plunging headfirst into paradigms and word tenses and translations and whatnot, for we have yet another exam tomorrow.  I'm feeling pretty good about it...mostly because I made up songs to remember the principal parts of the four verbs that we have to be able to spit out of our brains onto the paper (there's a mental image for you).  So now I can sing you a rousing rendition of "Don't Stop Believing" all about the Greek verb "erxomai" (I go), or a heartfelt performance of "Mama Who Bore Me" all about the verb "luo" (I loose/destroy)  If you're feeling patriotic, I can sing about the verb "grapho" (I write) to the tune of "America the Beautiful", or if you're going through a bad breakup I'd be happy to sing about "ago" (I lead) to "Rolling in the Deep."  So yeah, I'm going to rock this test out...literally.

I must tell you though, it was a rough Monday.  Mondays are always rough because of the post-weekend effects (I want to call it a weekend-hangover, even though there wasn't any alcohol involved), and today was extra intense since it was a pre-exam day.  Class was interminable because I had a horrible stomach ache the whole time, and then I nearly fell asleep in the library while studying during the afternoon (literally - I had put my head down on the table to rest for a few minutes and was just starting to enter that jumbled-thought pre-dream phase when all of a sudden what was left of my consciousness began shrieking "WAKE UP, YOU'RE IN A LIBRARY!!!").  Then I went on to a 2-hour review session that I didn't feel was really necessary for me to be successful on the exam, but which I didn't want to skip and then regret missing later.  And then more studying in the evening.  Except that the home studying also included a great deal of guitar playing, a decent amount of phone chatting, and a fair amount of lake-walking.  And eating a microwaveable corndog and fries for dinner.  And of course, the songwriting.  Can't forget that.

All in all, it was a LONG day.  The more the summer term goes on, the more ragged I feel I become.  But I'm hanging on...one day at a time.

Another day, another destiny.

Getting Back to Basics

At the halfway point through the year, I've been thinking about this blog project and kind of reviewing in my head how it has been going.  (Note: I have no idea if today is ACTUALLY halfway through the year, but it's June, and that's the middle of the year, so we're going with it).

Generally, I'm pleased with how things are going.  For one thing, I love being able to write more, and I like that I've managed to garner something of an audience - it may be small, but it's widely varied.  And although I don't write the most witty or heartfelt or fabulous things on a daily basis (see the last two day's posts), my little self-reflection through writing experiment has been proving successful, I think.  When I started this blog, it was because I was unhappy with practically everything in my life, and wanted to make some changes, and I wanted to make myself accountable to those changes.  And I'm definitely happier than I was when I started this blog, so that's a good sign.

But lately, I think I've been getting away from my goal-focus, and I want to change that.  While I like writing witty reflections on daily life, the real point of this blog was to make this a year of living proactively...and I think that lately I've slacked off a bit on the proactive living.  I want to get back to that.

For the most part, I think that I did well in this goal today.  Granted, I didn't get up in time for church (overslept), but I exercised early, worked early, talked to my family and a couple friends, got some Greek studying done, and went to my Bible study tonight.  I like my days to be busy, yet somehow I fall frequently into the internet/tv trap; so I was very pleased with how today went.

In the spirit of proactive living, I've also thrown myself out on a limb in the dating world, which I may reveal more on later...right now you get to live in mystery, but I think it will be good for me.  Now that I've gotten more comfortable and confident with my life here, I want to start pushing myself out of my comfort zone - sometimes to make real change, you have to take some risks.  I also want to get back to reading the Bible on a daily basis - a habit that has ironically fallen by the wayside during my first year of seminary.

So starting tomorrow (let's be real, I'm about to go to bed), I'm going to start focusing on those initial goals again.  Here are the five I'm going to tackle first...

-Build Self-Confidence
-Rejuvenate Relationship with God
-Maintain a Budget
-Exercise Daily/Eat Healthy
-Be More Open

Yep, I'm taking on the big ones.  Bring it on.

I did it again.

And by that, I mean I put off writing a blog post until my eyes are having trouble staying open.  Not because I went out and did anything fabulously social, but just because I was doing other things about the house, talking to friends online and watching movies and whatnot.  So...yeah.  Sorry to disappoint, but this is it for tonight.

Here is a short collection of videos representing bits and pieces of my weekend thus far.  Just because I feel bad not posting anything substantial for two days in a row...

Watched this movie:



Played this song on the guitar:



Danced around my apartment to this song:



Watched/mocked my favorite movie with friends:



Continued reading this book:

So Tired...

Isn't it ironic that the days I have the most to write about are the days that I am the most exhausted?  I have several things I want to write about, and which I could write about with much wit and awesomeness...but I literally can't keep my eyes open, and that makes wit difficult.  So I'll write tomorrow, and leave you this note now to fulfill my blog-every-day vow.  Check back later!

I AM SUCH A SLACKERRRRRRRR!

Yeah.  My example today should never be followed by anyone, ever.  I quite literally spent almost the entire afternoon/evening sitting on my couch surfing the internet (do people even say that anymore?) and watching TV. And that's about it.

I think this is primarily a result of three things:

1) Post-exam study burnout.  When you spend 15 hours studying in one day, it is very hard to become motivated to study the next day.  Unfortunately, the intensive nature of the course makes us have no real breathers after exams; we just plunge right into the next lesson, in the same class period.

2) Exhaustion.  Last night I went to bed around 11:15 (45 minutes later than usual), didn't fall asleep until almost 2:00, and then got up at 7:15, left my apartment at 7:45, drove through McDonalds for breakfast (don't judge me, I was out of cereal), got to campus at 8:00, studied for half an hour, took an exam, then had 2.5 more hours of class.  So I was tired.  BUT, I didn't want to take a nap because I couldn't justify spending time sleeping when I had so much stuff to do...but since I was tired anyway, I still ended up just doing nothing.

3) Overconfidence in the stuff we covered in class today, leading me to assume that homework wouldn't be difficult.  I didn't get a chance to look over Lesson 15 (the Greek perfect tense, if you were wondering) as I was supposed to, but when we covered it in class today it made perfect sense and I was translating sentences mostly correctly off the cuff with ease.  So I figured that since the homework was going to be easy, why start it before 9:00pm?  Yeah.  Not a good idea.  But I did get done what I think we'll get through in class tomorrow, and I'll have the weekend to catch up.

But today, I was a slacker.  Big time.

On the bright side, I was eventually somewhat productive in the realm of domesticity.  I did laundry (finally), hung up two new pieces of wall decor (finally), and cooked a real meal with real ingredients that didn't come out of the freezer (pineapple meatloaf and confetti couscous).  I also played guitar until I wore blisters into the fingers of my left hand (I haven't played in a while).  I also spied on a cluster of attractive men who appeared to be moving into a neighboring apartment, but it turned out that the attractive men were just friends of the lovely young couple who seems to be the real residents.  Drat.

To some things up, I was a mess of procrastination today.  Even as I've been writing this post I've been floating over to Facebook and staring blankly at the screen for no reason...I need a fresh start, and a weekend.  Happily, both come tomorrow, along with some relaxation with friends that I am REALLY looking forward to.  But more on that later.  May you be more productive than me as you carry on with your day.

Following the Evil Prophet into the Desert (or, Learning Ancient Greek)

Foreign languages are my thing.  I seem to have a natural ability for them, and I love being able to decode sentences and translate them back to English.  It's like a big puzzle to figure out.  I also like being able to travel to foreign countries and communicate with the people there, and I absolutely love the insights into a country's history that are opened up by studying a language.  You have such a greater appreciation for a culture when you speak their language.

According to my love of languages, I have been happily bopping down the road to multilingualism, picking up languages here and there as they become available.  Besides being fluent in French, I speak bits and pieces of German, and as you know I am now enrolled in Greek at SMU.  Quadrilingualism, here I come.

In my first French lesson back in the 9th grade, I learned how to say "Hello, my name is ___" and "I am an American", closely followed by "I would like a ham sandwich, please."  German was fairly similar in its approach; the first lesson included lots of people walking around saying "Are you Maria?"  and "NO, my name is Christian Hansen!"  These phrases are somewhat useful in daily life...especially if you need to eat or determine a person's identity.  Simple phrases for concrete, necessary results.

Greek is different.

For one thing, I'm not learning 21st century Greek.  No, in true seminary fashion, I'm learning ancient Greek, with the aim of being able to read the New Testament in its original Greek form.  As I've been going through this class, I've learned to say all sorts of bizarre things, and I kind of think it's hilarious.  I would like to share with you some of the things that I know how to say in Greek.  Mind you, I am only a week and a half into this course (even if it is an intensive)...and here are some sentences I have translated thus far:

"A brother and a sister have land and they want to have kingdoms."

"The evil prophet is leading the children out of the church and into the desert."

"The children were praying on behalf of their sister, but they do not believe in the Lord and gods of stone do not answer."

"The heart of the small servant is faithful, but evil are the works of the master of the house."

"...and you didn't even gather the children into the houses!"

"The little sister does not want to see the dead child, for death is not good"

"Your sister and her child are in the boat, but they do not have bread."

"Our slaves throw a stone into the boat because they want to destroy it."

"These sinners are wicked, but we ought not to kill them."

"I was in the temple, but you were in the desert."

Yeah, these are all really odd sentences.  But I've also noticed that as the lessons progress, they seem to be getting mildly more violent.  Take these sentences from my last lesson, for example...

"The evil authorities were about to kill the teacher of righteousness and bring his head into the assembly."

"The demons stole the messenger's garment and threw it into the sea."

And, my personal favorite...

"You sent the children into the desert to die, and you did not save them.  This will be upon your heads."

Now there's a sentence you can use on a daily basis.

So yeah, I totally can read all kinds of bizarre and odd stuff in Greek.  I really find it hilarious, because I picture this ancient community having all this ridiculous stuff happening to them...evil prophets keep messing with the assemblies, and everyone is eating bread and riding in boats, and all the while apostles and disciples are proclaiming things about stones falling from heaven and the perils of sin.  

  

It's too bad no one will give those people a ham sandwich.

**In the spirit of learning pointless phrases in foreign languages, I give you Eddie Izzard's take on learning French.  If you speak French, I highly recommend you watch it.  If you don't speak French, you can still watch it, but it won't be quite as funny...

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Yes, today I ceased to be a 22-year-old and became a 23-year-old.  This is pretty convenient since I've been rounding myself up to 23 in my mind since January.  A friend of mine asked me how old I was in February, I told him 23, and then had to correct myself as he looked at me quizzically.  So it's nice to really be 23.

For the first day in my entire life, I had class on my birthday.  Having a summer birthday, I was always spared the misfortune of going to school on my birthday, but summer intensives kind of throw a wrench into that privilege.  So I spent my first waking hours as a 23 year-old person sitting through an unusually tedious and difficult Greek class, hopped up on precautionary Benedryl to fight against another allergy attack and with a paper cup of coffee fighting against the drowsiness created by the Benedryl.  After class, I fought through a half hour of traffic to get back to my apartment from campus (less than 2 miles away), and eventually got frustrated with Greek homework and my non-working phone interchangeably, and was generally not having a good day.

However, I wouldn't necessarily call this a bad birthday, because all the birthday parts of the day were good! For one thing, my inbox looked something like this for most of the day:

Yes, for people of the Facebook generation, birthdays make you feel really popular.  I know some people get annoyed with the clogged inbox, but I kind of like it...besides overwhelming me with the birthday love, I enjoy imagining what would happen if all those people who wished me happy birthday showed up at my door together to celebrate my birthday.  It would be quite the odd collection of people...in that screenshot alone (which represents only about a third of the birthday greetings I received) you've got college friends, grad school friends, sorority sisters, middle school friends, fellow church camp counselors, high school friends, and Paris housemates...I even got a birthday message from the French girl I did a homestay with when I visited France in high school.  I kind of love Facebook...when you're away from so many people on your birthday, it's nice to have them all thrown in your face wishing you general happiness.

I also shared a fabulous birthday dinner with some of my friends here in Dallas at Chuy's, my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant.  I'm generally not one for huge parties, and prefer just getting together with a few friends to engaging with large crowds....it also fits my current study schedule a bit better.  Happily, friends started arriving at my apartment right when I was reaching my panic point, and enchiladas with tomatillo sauce and laughter with friends effectively diffused that stress.  Also, the room we were seated in was like a shrine to Elvis, and we all found that to be hilarious...

Sarah and Rachel

Erin, Kristen, and I

The Elvis portrait above our table

So good food plus good friends always equals a good birthday.  And although my night subsequently included a ton of homework (and will continue to include some vocab flashcards after I post this), I did have a good birthday overall.

Although today's view from 23 may have seemed much like yesterday's view from 22, what with the Greek homework and broken phone and all, I know that I've grown in tremendous ways this past year.  For one thing, this time last year I had no idea that I would be in Dallas right now, and I hadn't met any of the wonderful women that I shared my birthday with today.  This year was a difficult one in many ways as I separated myself both from family and from friends who had become like family to move clear across the country to a new city and a new school.  The post-grad transition year was a lot more difficult than I expected it to be.  But I truly think that I'm more mature because of it, and have a better grasp on my goals for the future, and I'm slowly getting my Celia-tastic confident swag back after a year of feeling out of place and doubting my ability to succeed.  And that's a good feeling.

So here's to year 23!

My Review of "The Bachelorette", Week 3.

Yes, I watch The Bachelorette.  Deal with it.  If you don't watch the show and don't care about it, you may cease reading now...and if you do watch the show, but haven't seen this week's episode yet, be aware that spoilers abound in this post.

Also, Danielle and Amy, this post is for you in particular.  Feel special :)

So here we go.

I want to title this week's episode "SUCH A Bad Idea!!!!"

Here is my evidence:

• Jeff's Mask:  SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!!  Actually, letting Jeff on the show at all...not the best idea either.

• Making the mask removal a big deal, and not being amazingly attractive or having some kind of dramatic scar a la Phantom of the Opera: SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!!  The longer you  leave on the mask, the better the reveal has to be...and it definitely didn't live up to it.

• Having a Comedy Roast for a date: SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!!!!!  That's just asking to be insulted.  It was predestined to end badly.

• Everything William said at the Comedy Roast: SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!!!  You may have a never-to-be-realized dream of being a stand-up comic, but you're also on a date.  Use your brain.

• William just pushing Ashley off to talk to the other guys because he feels bad, and just giving up: SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!

• Bentley's entire being:  SUCH A BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Ashley not listening to the girl who tipped her off about Bentley being a jerk: SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!!!

• That girl just texting Ashley about Bentley being a jerk instead of calling and elaborating on his jerk-ness with emphatic voice: SUCH A BAD IDEA!!!!!!!!

• Super short strapless sparkley dress and super gigantic sparkley necklace: Not the best idea.  There was too much going on...the dress should have been longer, or it should have had straps, or the necklace should have been smaller.

And now for some good ideas: 

• Getting rid of Jeff: Good Idea.  He creeps me out.  It disturbs me that he is from my hometown.

• Bentley leaving now: Good Idea.  Especially since the initial previews made it look (to me) like he was going to hang around to the very end and then go into super-jerk mode.  At least he's gone early.

• Giving William a second chance: Good Idea.  Because even if he didn't handle it so well, he did seem sincerely sorry.  Although, I'm pretty sure I passed William jogging on my apartment complex walking trails today (it looked JUST like him!!!), so perhaps that doesn't work out.

• Dramatic shot of burning mask at the end: Good Idea.  Because there is no circumstance where dramatic filming of a burning mask is NOT a good idea.

These are my thoughts.  What are yours?

Watching Dragon Movies

The only really unusual thing to comment on about life today is that I realized that I've watched three dragon movies this weekend...which is weird, because I'm generally not one to watch dragon movies.  I picture dragon-movie-lovers to be the Dungeons and Dragons players who engage in a little larping on the weekends (live action role-playing.  I know that term from a TV reference, not from personal experience).

Of these three dragon movies, I really enjoyed two of them.  The other I only watched incidentally, because it was on TV and I "watched" it while doing other things, but didn't really watch it.

Here are some thoughts on my excursion into the dragonesque cienema.

Film #1: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader



Although there are not actually any dragons in that trailer, I swear there is a dragon in the movie.  In fact, the whole dragon thing is a major plot point and important means of character development.  This is my absolute favorite of the Narnia books (which I read in their entirety last semester), and therefore my favorite of the Narnia movies...the only one I felt was worth owning, if that tells you how much I love this movie.  I watched it on Saturday, and I feel that I will likely watch it again very soon...it makes me cry every time (I weeped like a baby reading several scenes in the book), and it's an amazing commentary on skeptic's perception of the Christian faith.  That's what's so great about the Narnia series, they're simple stories that carry vast undertones  and thought-provoking messages.  You should read them.  And you should watch this movie.  Preferably in that order.

Film #2: Eragon



This is the movie I only watched because it was on TV and there was nothing else on.  I did see enough to be amused by John Malkovich being cast in a villainous role, since I shall forever associate him with Athos from The Man in the Iron Mask.  There's also something about his voice that makes him even less intimidating...something about the timbre of it, it has a sort of sing-song-y quality that makes it hard for me to take him seriously as a villain.  Regardless, I do remember liking this movie when I saw it in high school...those fantasy movies tend to pull you in, and they're always filled with exciting near-death escapes and what have you.

Film #3: How to Train Your Dragon



We watched this movie for my life group tonight (we're doing this thing for the summer where we watch movies one week and discuss them the next), I actually liked it!  I remember when this movie came out a couple of years ago I thought it looked like a horrible movie, but then everyone who saw it kept saying that it was good, but I still never saw it.  I understand now why they liked it, though...it has all those universal and timeless themes of going beyond appearances and challenging hate and fear as a social norm and working together instead of working against each other and an outcast becoming a hero.  All good things.  And the dragon was all adorable (one of the girls pointed out how it looked like her cat, and it made it all the more adorable because all it's cat-like mannerisms came out).  It was a good little movie, and I enjoyed watching it.

So there you have it.  Three dragon movies that all crossed my path this weekend.  You'd almost think I planned it this way.  But no.  Sometimes, my life just coordinates itself around some bizarre theme.  And this weekend, it seems that the theme was dragons.  Weird.

Procrastination 101

Welcome to Celia's lesson on the Art of Procrastination.  At the end of this course, students will be able to effectively put off working on their homework in creative and vaguely productive fashions, until they magically reach a point where they are willing to complete that work which they aim to procrastinate.

Part 1: What is procrastination?

Procrastination is the deliberate avoidance of a necessary task.  In the case of the seminary student, it may be blamed on ancient Greek's excessive use of conjugation and cases, resulting in an endless set of paradigms that is of such an overwhelming nature that the very thought of homework study induces tactics of avoidance within the student.

Part 2: Practicum

A series of procrastination techniques will now be presented to the student.  These techniques may be performed in any order and according to the student's preference.  Please note that this is merely a sample set of the myriad of procrastination techniques which are available to the average student.  The provided procrastination techniques were collected via a case study of myself on June 4th, 2011.

• Search for a DVD copy of Funny Face at 1) Half-Price Books and 2) Movie Trading Company.  After each of these attempts fails, order the DVD from Amazon for $7.50.

• Make a grocery list.  To lengthen this activity, search through two cookbooks and several online websites to find intriguing and appealing recipes with the cheapest ingredient list possible.

• Go grocery shopping.  Upon return, put groceries away.

• Make homemade hummus.  Since you do not have a specific recipe, you merely experiment with the rough guidelines once given to you by a friend until the result looks and tastes appropriately hummus-like.

• Eat lunch, including the aforementioned hummus and grapes, while watching an episode of Friends on DVD.  Laugh a lot at the sitcom antics.  Follow the healthy lunch with a tasty but unfortunate combination of chocolate chips, peanut butter, and banana that will be satisfying in the moment but later make you feel sick.  This will grant you an extra hour of procrastination.

• Research French Christian student ministries for your job for half an hour.  Begin to feel sick from the previous step.  Cease to work, and lay down on the couch.

• Watch an episode of Gilmore Girls of the title : "The Gnostic Gospels were Found at Nag Hammadi," because you are intrigued as a seminary student about how this reference will be pulled into the episode plot (spoiler: Lorelai and Rory attend a Rare Manuscript Society benefit dinner at Emily's request).  Laugh, and wonder why you don't watch Gilmore Girls more often (especially when you own the first 3 seasons on DVD).

• Go for a walk with the hope that fresh air will be reinvigorating both in health and in productivity.  Call four friends, get their voicemails.  Call your mother, talk to her extensively, and be scolded to go and do your homework.

• Sing your entire college voice lesson repertoire, along with assorted Broadway tunes, with the assistance of karaoke/instrumental YouTube videos.

• Return to the grocery store to purchase Bisquick, which you did not purchase on the morning grocery run, but which is necessary to make the Coconut Pie that you want to bake.

• Attempt to work on homework.  Become overwhelmed.  Attempt fails.

• Use the internet.  This may include watching YouTube videos, stalking high school classmates on Facebook, checking friends' blogs for updates, checking Facebook for updates, etc.  Repeat these steps as often as necessary, as the real-time world of the internet yields the possibility of new posts every few seconds.

• Sit down to really do your homework.  This attempt is successful.  You accomplish several of your assigned Greek Lessons, and make paradigm charts for the Present Middle/Passive Indicative, the Imperfect Active Indicative, and the Imperfect Middle/Passive Indicative tenses.  Become more adept at recognizing demonstratives.

• Get hungry.  Decide to make Coconut Pie.  While pie is baking, work on translating a newsletter from French to English, thereby making up the work that was previously delayed due to the chocolate-chip-peanut-butter-banana incident.  When work time is successfully made-up, make Greek vocabulary flashcards.

• Take pie out of the oven.  Marvel at it.  Let it cool, while taking notes from the Greek textbook.  Eat a piece of pie.

• Work on Greek exercises, until you begin to get confused.  Look over weekend to-do list, and discover that a significant amount of work has actually been completed or partially completed.  

Once this final step has been accomplished, the student is free to stop working, with the awareness that less procrastination must be employed tomorrow, and with a decreased feeling of being overwhelmed.

Part 3: Final Exam

In a weekend setting, the final exam is encompassed by the successful ability to complete the necessary study requirements before classes resume on Monday morning.  In our case study, the results of the final exam remains to be seen; however, we remain hopeful of our subject's ultimate success.

This concludes Procrastination 101.  Thank you for your participation.

Disclaimer: Procrastination should not be used excessively, and should not be used to the ultimate detriment of the student.  Celia's blog will not be held responsible for others' abuse of procrastination.

Sigh of Relief

Week One of Summer Greek (including Exam #1) has been successfully survived.  Only 5 more to go...

Although I have QUITE the enormous pile of homework for the weekend (and a fair amount of non-homework related things to do), I couldn't really bring myself to do any of it, and therefore took a much-needed break today.  No declension paradigms, no bizarre accenting rules - just me, The Bachelorette, sweet and sour chicken, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the most recent Narnia movie, based off my favorite book of the series).  All good things.  I also spent a good amount of time talking on the phone with my mom/the college best friend, and I used the Wii Fit for the first time in 46 days, AND went for a quick walk around the lake.  I also solved the mystery of the "broken" food processor and got it to work, meaning that a great deal of homemade hummus will shortly enter my life.

Unfortunately the good times never last, and tomorrow I will jump back on the Greek train...and it's not one of those cutesy sightseeing trains, it's a TGV.  I'll also have to do some grocery shopping since my stock of freezer-food is beginning to run low.  As previously mentioned, homemade hummus will be on the agenda, and I really want to make a grape pie...my grandpa made one once and I really liked it (I was just about the only one in the family who did), and I've been wanting to recreate it.  But, I'm fairly certain he just made up the recipe, and the only one I've been able to find that sounds like his involves something called elderflower syrup, and since I've never heard of that I don't want to put forth the effort to find it...besides, I think it's a British thing.  In any case, I feel like cooking real food, and not just eating freezer things...and I feel like cooking interesting things.  So stay tuned...we'll see what happens.

Here's the Problem.

Greek is consuming my life.  Literally.  Let me outline my day for you:

7:15am - Arise and greet the day.  This moment becomes progressively less enthusiastic with each passing day of my intensive summer class.

8:00am - Leave the apartment and drive to campus.

8:30am-12:30pm - Greek class.  Yes, for four hours.  Yes, every day.

12:30pm - Leave campus, return to apartment

12:45pm - Eat lunch

1:30pm - Work on stuff for my job

3:00pm - Drive to library

3:15-6:00pm - Study for tomorrow's Greek exam

6:00pm - Leave campus, return to apartment

6:15pm - Eat dinner.

7:00pm-8:40pm - Work on Greek lessons that are not on tomorrow's test, but will be covered in class tomorrow after the exam.

8:40pm - Greek symbols stop making sense, head stops spinning, start panicking because I have 3 untouched lessons and one with incomplete exercisese.

8:40pm-8:45pm - Panic.

8:45pm-9:00pm - Take a shower to try and wake up a bit.

9:00-10:00 - Work on horribly confusing Greek lessons that I understand in theory but contain translation exercises that I can't successfully complete.

And that brings you up to right now.  And that is the problem.

As it stands right now, I have a pounding headache, I'm exhausted, and I can tell that my brain has shut off for the evening as far as Greek is concerned.  The more I read, the more confused I become, and I am starting to be afraid that continuing working on these lessons tonight will jeopardize my ability to do well on the exam tomorrow.  But, the syllabus has us up to Lesson 11 tomorrow, and right now I am only up to Lesson 9, with both Lessons 8 and 9 only partially completed because the exercises are confusing the heck out of me.  I even find myself not recognizing or understanding things in these exercises that are ON the test tomorrow, and that is freaking me out.

I think I need to stop working.

But if I stop working, I'll have like six lessons to cover over the weekend - each of which takes like 2-3 hours to complete.

I appear to have reached an impasse.  And it sucks.

So here's what I think I'm going to do.

I am going to review the things on the test some more, and go to bed.  Because this exam tomorrow is 20% of my grade, and hopefully I'll be able to catch up over the weekend.  And anyway, we probably won't make it to Lesson 10 in class tomorrow, and I've done at least some of Lessons 8 and 9, and I'm so lost on the exercises that it wouldn't hurt to do them after having discussed them in class.

I need a break.  I haven't even had time to watch a movie since I started this class because I can't justify not working on something for an entire 2 hours.  The weekend can't come soon enough.  After class lets out at 12:30 tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to come home and watch my DVR recording of last week's episode of The Bachelorette.  And tomorrow night I'll snuggle up and watch a movie.

And then I will spend the rest of the weekend working on Greek, and then start into another crazy week.

Sigh...

Eating Trendy Sushi

There are two things that I really like to do in my free time.  The first is doing things that are free.  The second is doing things that are fancy.

By their very nature, these two things tend to be mutually exclusive..."fancy" implies expensive, and "free" implies that I'm not rich enough to afford the expensive things.  However, through a bit of research, my friend Emily and I discovered a magical place where fancy and free collide:

The Dallas Fish Market.

OK, so the name makes it sound cheesy.  To counter this, I should point out that the Dallas Fish Market is not actually a fish market (as I thought it was when Emily first suggested it), but is a fancy schmancy seafood restaurant in downtown Dallas.  You know the type of restaurant I'm talking about: streamlined interior decor, servers dressed in all black, where things on the menu don't have decimal points and where most of the prices are in double digits.  Thee atmosphere ironically screams of a twenty-to-thirty-something demographic even while appealing more to the budget of accomplished businesspeople than your average grad student.  However, on Wednesdays from 5-9, The Dallas Fish Market serves up complimentary sushi in the bar to anyone who orders a drink.  Yes, please!

So in pursuit of free sushi, Emily and I set off on our adventure into the trendy world of young professionals.  In true city-chic spirit, we took the DART to the restaurant (the Dallas Area Rail Transit, for you non-Dallas folks).  I'm not a fan of driving or parking in major cities, so public transportation was a good idea.  But, it was here that Emily and I began to discover a pattern that would be somewhat consistent throughout our dinner adventure: the pattern of ALMOST being all city-tastic and awesomely trendy, but persistently falling a bit short of the mark.  The first place that this pattern began to reveal itself was in the attempt to purchase a train ticket from the automated machine, while a security guard condescendingly shouted semi-helpful instructions at us from afar.  Finally in possession of the ticket, we proceeded to take the wrong stairs down to the platform (the main stairs were closed), and ended up on a sidewalk hovering about 30 feet above the platform, thereby forcing us to retrace our steps back to the ticket machine (and past the laughing security guard) and take the elevator.

Once we were ON the train, things were a success, and we got ourselves to the Akard station, navigated the short walk to the restaurant, and were immediately seated in the bar.  The bar was filled with high tables and stools and cylindrical lamps, and the restaurant had sort of a bluish glow about it that got progressively blue-er as our meal went on.  The setting was like a scene out of a chick-flick where the fabulous young heroine meets the dashing love of her life...unfortunately, Emily is engaged, and all the men (which were few) were rather too old for my taste.

Over bops our waiter, who hands us two menus and tells us the details of the sushi deal: buy a drink, receive four pieces of sushi.  Buy another drink, receive four more pieces of sushi.  And so on.  Kind of like giving a dog a treat for rolling over, but giving people sushi for increasing their blood alcohol levels.  You know, same thing.

Waiter walks away, and Emily and I start to peruse the drink menu.  Immediately, we discover that the specialty drinks are falling into the $10 range, so we call the waiter back over and ask if there's any discount on the drinks for happy hour.

"Not on the specialty drinks, but the Cabernet and the Chardonnay are $5, and well drinks are $4."

"OK, thank you," we reply.  He walks away.

"What are well drinks?"  I ask Emily.  I'm by and large a non-drinker, and therefore I am not familiar with the associated lingo.

"I have no idea," Emily answers.  

"Uhh, ok...better go with the wine.  What did he say, Chardonnay and what?"  

"I don't remember the other one..."

Drop another notch on the trendy meter.

"So let's get the Chardonnay, yes?"  I laugh.

"Yes!"  Emily replies, also laughing.

The waiter comes back.  "Have you decided?"

Emily ventures forth: "Yes, I'd like a glass of Chardonnay."  I add that I'd like the same.  The waiter walks away to retrieve the drinks.  Mission accomplished.

Like I said before, I'm not really a drinker, but I always feel somewhat more fabulous when I'm sitting next to a long-stemmed glass of wine.  The Chardonnay really wasn't bad as wine goes (all you wine-lovers can scold me later); I've never had white wine before, and I liked it way better than red wine, even if I still didn't end up finishing the whole glass.  

Then out came the sushi.

When I hear "complimentary sushi," I envision tiny little rolls of rice and cucumber, with maybe a hint of crab tossed in for good measure.  After all, it's free; better not get your hopes up, right?  Not so at The Dallas Fish Market: we had pieces of Spicy Tuna sushi and Rainbow sushi.  Granted, you don't get a choice of sushi; the waiter informs you of what the free sushi is, and you happily accept it.  It was fun though, because I tend to play it safe with sushi and get the same things every time, and it was fun to try something new.  I'd never had Spicy Tuna or Rainbow sushi before, and I really liked both - especially the Rainbow sushi, which has a piece of cool white fish around the outside, with crab in the middle.  SO good.

With only four pieces of sushi per person, we finished our mini-meal fairly quickly.  Emily debated ordering another glass of wine to acquire more sushi, but decided against it.  Personally, I had eaten a late lunch and wasn't super hungry, and didn't have a strong desire to order a second drink when I wasn't going to finish the first.  I was happy with my four pieces of tasty trendy sushi.  So we got the check, and headed back off to the DART in good spirits.

All in all, I had a really great time on our trendy-sushi adventure.  I keep meaning to explore places in downtown Dallas and never seem to be willing to do the necessary research, so it was really cool to do something in the city.  And, as non-trendy as I may be, I LOVE trendy/fancy food places, especially ones that   don't leave me broke afterwards.  Emily had fun too; in fact, we may go back next Wednesday, and see if she can bring her fiance along...he doesn't like sushi, but he would order a drink.  And when his drink comes with sushi, we will be there to eat it for him.

Because strategy is a very important part of being trendy.