A Thursday in Celia's World

It's Thursday.

Today I...

-Woke up and made myself pretty

-Had a Starbucks date with my friend Rachel

-Walked through SMU's campus in glorious weather

-Held a door open for a guy coming out of the student center.  Guy seemed flabbergasted at my consideration of his door-holding needs.

-Watered the community garden without killing any of the plants

-Nearly yelled at a worker to turn the hose water back on so I could finish watering the plants, then realized that the water stopped because the hose was bent and not because said worker had turned it off.

-Walked back through SMU's campus in glorious weather, a bit more muddy than previously

-Watched TV while working on my presentation outline

-Fell asleep for an hour and a half

-Woke up again

-Ate an orange chicken frozen meal for lunch

-Watched "Friends" and kept working on the presentation

-Drove back to campus

-Learned about the French Revolution, Christianity in Latin America, Hebrews, and James

-Went to Roly Poly for dinner with my friends Erin and Miranda

-Went to a Taize worship service at a fancy schmancy cathedral-esque church

-Watched TV and skyped with my friend Brandi while working on my presentation outline

-Ate a bowl of raisin granola cereal

-Debated getting a Netflix subscription

-Wrote this blog post

-Took a shower

-Went to bed.

The end.

April Goal Setting

I made buttermilk biscuits from scratch today.

Let's set some goals, shall we?

I admit, I'm rather hesitant to set more goals...not because I haven't accomplished the preexisting goals of yester-month, but because I'm moving back into that stressed-out mode that makes me think I have time for nothing but schoolwork, even though I frequently avoid homework.  It's a weird phenomenon, but a familiar one.  BUT, I think that by setting out some self-care oriented goals, I'll be able to avoid falling completely into the pits of despair that come with having to write 40+ pages (and doing the associated research).  Avoiding pits of despair is always preferable.

So, here are some goals for this month.  This time around, I'm narrowing the broad goals down into more concrete things that still fall under the broader categories.  I don't want goal-setting to add MORE stress.  That would be counterproductive, no?

Goal #1: Go to church/life group every Sunday. (Relationship with God)

Goal #2: Wii Fit every other day  (Get Fit)

Goal #3: Read a chapter of a non-school related book before bed every night.  (Read for Fun)

Goal #4: Update budget with actual spending numbers, then track spending for the month (Create a Budget)

Goal #5: Don't procrastinate just because "you don't feel like working"; take deliberate, designated breaks to avoid getting burnt out (Improve Study Skills)

So there you have it.  That's the plan for the rest of the month...and, believe it or not, for the rest of the semester!!  I had a weird realization this morning that I'll be getting ready to graduate (again)...I'm feeling pretty okay about that, to be honest.  As hard as it was to leave Transy last year, I'm counting down the days until I'm out of here with a Master's degree in hand, and can just go have a job instead of studying late into the night all the time.  Too bad no one told me that senioritis doesn't go away just because you go to graduate school...

But enough about that.  Onward with the April goals!!

Book Review!

You may not know this, but you're lucky you have this post to read.  I'd opened up my computer to write something, sat for a bit with no inspiration, fiddled about with Facebook...the usual process.  But then I started to feel sick (most likely a result of eating alfalfa sprouts of questionable quality in my dinner), and felt a great need to go lay down and never move again, and shut off the computer in favor of going to bed.  As it turns out, I wasn't actually tired, and instead read roughly 80 pages of Jennifer Donnelly's book Revolution, finished it, felt somewhat better, and hauled myself out of bed to write my mandated daily blog post.

My friend Miranda lent me Revolution after she read it over spring break and realized that the book had my name written all over it.  The general plot is that this girl goes to Paris (not under happy circumstances), and finds a diary written during the French revolution revealing the horrifying truth behind the death of Louis-Charles, "The Lost King of France", who was Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's son and who (obviously, if you know your history at all), never became king, but was imprisoned and died at the age of 10.  Anyway, this book is full of French history, musical references, and general scheming intrigue.  As a young adult novel, it has its share of melodrama, but most of that gets rolled out by chapter 6, and by the time Andi (the lead character) gets to Paris and finds the diary, it becomes insanely difficult to put the book down.  It's one of those stories that sucks you in completely.  The fact that I read this 400+ page book in under 2 weeks, when I have enormous qualities of school reading as well, testifies to the fact that it's a page-turner.

Another thing I liked about the book is that it immersed me in an era of French history that, comparatively, I don't know all that much about.  You would think that I would know a ton about the French Revolution, but in reality my bank of French history knowledge is hugely tilted in favor of Louis XIV's court - about 100 years earlier (thanks, senior seminar).  And, of course Napoleon came after the French Revolution...and while rioting citizens and overthrowing the monarchy and the Reign of Terror are a big deal, the Revolution manages to be overshadowed by the colossal figures of Louis XIV and Napoleon which bookend it.  Odd, but true.  And even though it's historical fiction, Revolution is quite accurate in its portrayal of the time period.  It makes me want to go and read more about the French Revolution.  It's amazing to me how the world that Louis XIV built dissolved into complete chaos within 100 years.  It makes you think about how unstable things really can be, you know?

If you're at all into French history, you should definitely give this book a go...or, even if you're not and you just want a good story to escape into, this is a good one.  It's really fantastic.  And, it helped me continue in that "Read for Fun" goal :)

Oy...Headache.

Sorry kids, we're falling back on a short posting-because-I-committed-myself-to-do-so-every-day-of-2011-and-not-because-I-particularly-want-to-write-something-awesome night.  I spent most of the day staring at the computer doing homework related things, and just opening the screen is bringing back the headache that hit about 20 minutes into my 3 hour class tonight (which followed 3 hours of library work, which followed 2.5 hours of working at my apartment).  I'm going to read something non-school-related, and go to bed.

But I feel bad that you all came here to read some witty elaboration of the events of my days or creative musings on life in general.  So, instead of leaving you with nothing, I'll leave you with this video that gives you a clue both into what I'm currently studying in my church history class, and the setting of the book that I'm about to go read. Hint: Lady Gaga is not the answer...

3 Month Goal Check-Up

Happy April 3rd.  Can you believe it's already April??  I can't.  These three months have FLOWN by...I'm down to a month left in this semester, I have an internship set up for next year, and I'm registering for classes on Tuesday.  I'm simultaneously almost done my first year, and about to be a senior.  I like the way that sounds.

So, let's do a goal check-up, shall we?

I've actually made progress on almost all of them!

1) Rejuvenate Relationship With God  - I've started doing a daily online devotional in a pact with a friend, and even though I'm not in the habit of doing it everyday, I'm at least thinking of God non-academically.  Baby steps.
2) Get Involved in a Church - Not only have I chosen a church to go to, but I've gotten involved with a women's small group that I really like!  I've also started to go to the traditional service instead of the contemporary service, and that's been a nice change; I'm starting to get a bit burnt out on contemporary worship.
3) Create a Budget - It's made.  I've never actually checked up on if I'm living by it, but mentally I'm pretty sure that I am.  I ought to sit down and do a legitimate check of whether or not I'm keeping to the budget.  In fact, I just did a quick check, and I'm pretty well on track...my balance is a bit lower than I expected it to be at the end of March, but I also wasn't anticipating a $532 bill to the tax bureau (the joys of self-employment).
4) Make Work a Priority - I've been sticking to the work schedule that I set for myself at the beginning of the semester, and I've been doing better about making up work time that I've missed.
5) Get Fit - I've been exercising regularly (semi-regularly lately, I admit), lost roughly 10 pounds, and I've started to notice a change in my physical appearance...and so have other people!
6) Eat Healthy - My portion-sizing skills have gotten WORLD'S better.  And, I've been cooking healthy recipes too, and only eating when I'm hungry (except lately...need to get back on that train).
7) Improve Study Skills - So yes, this slacked at the beginning of the year.  But, I've been staying way more on top of things post-midterms.
8) Build Self-Confidence - In non-concrete ways, this is going well.  I've been paying more attention to my appearance, which is an automatic ego-boost, and I've been being more outgoing and friendly with people, which has also helped.
9) Read for Fun - My friend Miranda lent me a young adult fiction book called Revolution, which is about a girl who goes to Paris and finds a diary from the French Revolution.  It's somewhat dark, and sometimes I want to smack the main character, but it has a really good story going, and it's been a good way to unwind every night.  I'm hoping to stay in this habit.
10) Have Productive Hobbies - Well, I've been trying to cut back on TV and internet lately, does that count?  I say yes.
11) Explore Dallas - Thanks to Hannah's visit, I finally ventured downtown last week.  I guess on the whole, I've been getting out more since last semester, but there's still more to discover!
12) Get Involved in Community - Yeah, this one hasn't been accomplished at all...I get so caught up in schoolwork that it kind of consumes things.  I'm more involved in a church, that can count here too.
13) Be More Open - This is improving too; I've tried to loosen up a bit, and be more accepting of other people as they are, without taking their personalities/actions as an affront to my own happiness and worth...if that makes sense?  It does in my head.
14) Be More Positive - This one was going well, but definitely hasn't been being accomplished lately.
15) Cultivate Strong Relationships - I'm a bit torn about this one...friendships have been something of a struggle for me this semester, but at the same time, I think that I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I don't have to be everyone's best friend to be a worthwhile person.  It's a good realization to come to.

So yes, things seem to be going well!  I think I'll set out some goals for April tomorrow...this post got longer than I expected!!

NOOOOOOOOOO!

So UK lost its Final Four game to the UConn (which was pronounced as "Yukon," and rather confused me for the first half of the game).  Most of you probably know this, since most of you are affiliated with Kentucky yourselves.  Since I spent the last four years of my life living just down the street from the University of Kentucky, I'm a UK fan by association when the proper moment arises.  Moments like tonight.  I'm generally not that into sports, but this game managed to make me into one of those people sitting on the edge of the couch yelling at the TV and waving my arms in the air.  The neighbors were probably alarmed and confused.  It was an INTENSE game...UK came back from being 10 points down at the start of the second half to take the lead, then lose the lead, then take the lead, then lose the lead, then take the lead, then lose the lead, and so forth...until they ultimately lost to UConn by ONE point.  It was crazy.  My Facebook wall is now flooded with status updates of similar frustrated sentiment tinged with sadness.

Other news of the day includes library researching adventures, homework adventures, and (surprisingly successful) homemade fried chicken adventures, and work adventures.  I also made friends with two random black people at Cafe Brazil who were (understandably) intrigued by the books with "African American ____" in the title that my suburban white girl self kept pulling out of my backpack and placing in an ever-growing stack on my table.  To update you readers, I have a 1.5 hour group presentation next Tuesday on Christian Education in an African American cultural context, and had raided the library for all relevant materials before heading to the cafe to meet one of my project partners.  The girl next to me was really nice, and talked to me about her perspective and gave me her email and phone number to contact her if I have any other questions.  Yay for friendliness!

Tomorrow I WILL go to church AND my small group (I've been slacking on both of those things lately).  Also, can you believe that it's April???  Time for another goal check-up and goal setting for the month...that will be a post (hopefully) for tomorrow :)

Sister Adventures: A Photographic Journey of Awesomeness

Well, the sisterly adventures of Hannah's visit to Dallas have drawn to a close; I took her to the airport tonight, said goodbye with much weeping (yeah, we were THOSE people in the airport), and just received a text saying that she's landed back in St. Louis.  And, I'm back to the world of homework and general graduate school realities.

Fun fact:  I've been officially offered the internship at the Filipino church for next year!  Two thumbs up for plans coming together!  I'm going to sign the official paperwork on Monday, and register for classes on Tuesday; between those two events, my life will be scheduled for the rest of 2011 (and partially, through May of 2012).

But more about all that later.  This post is devoted to elaborating on the events of the last few days, via the photographic documentation of our adventures.

Adventure #1: Wandering the lake by my apartment

My apartment complex has quite the lovely walking trail around a couple of lakes, and I took Hannah down to show her around, and also to witness the various wildlife, including normal suburban wildlife like overeager squirrels...

And the terrifying live Turduckens-that-must-not-be-named...

Scary waterfowl are scary.  That one started chasing us shortly after we took this picture.

Adventure #2: Tex-Mex Dinner at Chuys

Yes please.  Enchiladas with tomatillo sauce and a free nacho bar because it was still happy hour.  Mexican food doesn't get much better than that.  If you visit me in Dallas, we're going.  If you're in Dallas and you're not visiting me, you're still going.  No choice.

Adventure #3: Baking Muffins and Cupcakes

To facilitate breakfasts for Hannah's visit, I bought a couple packs of chocolate chip muffin mix, which Hannah happily volunteered to mix and distribute into paper muffin cups...unfortunately, neatness doesn't appear to be her strong suit:

We also made the world's best Pina Colada cupcakes, which involve a batter of yellow cake mix, undrained crushed pineapple, and coconut extract, with a frosting of cream cheese, vanilla pudding, and more pineapple.  They are SO SO SO delicious...but very ugly, as you can see...

As you can see, we'd already eaten a few by the time we took this picture...proving that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover (or a cupcake by its haphazard frosting job).

Adventure #4: Celebrity Home Stalking


Following in the footsteps of my friend Brandi and I on our quest to discover Nelly's house last March, Hannah and I found a list of celebrity homes in Dallas (complete with GPS coordinates), and decided to track them down.

We set off enthusiastically to our first destination: the home of ex-President George W. Bush.  We entered the neighborhood with a few trepidations of secret-service people chasing us away, but excited about the prospects which lay before us...

We turned the corner onto the street, and all of a sudden, spied an older couple strolling down the sidewalk with a dog...and started flipping out, because George W. Bush and Barbara Bush were walking towards us!  Hannah managed this paparazzi shot out the back window...

Click the picture to make it bigger

Yeah okay, so that's not really them.  BUT we legitimately thought that it was them, until we were right up upon them and realized that their faces were wrong (not to mention the woman's blonde, non-Barbara Bush-esque hair).  Still, it was absolutely hilarious, and we both agree that they REALLY looked like them from a distance!  In any case, it turns out that we were on the wrong street...we went out to the real place this morning, and were unsurprisingly met by this sight:

A gate, with lots of signs about security and restricted access, blocking our path down the street of expensive homes, including the Bush's house.  I guess we should have known that we wouldn't be able to just wander up to the door of a past president's house.  Incidentally, Hannah and I were thwarted in our ambition to track down the Jonas brothers' house, because we looked it up online beforehand and discovered that it, too, was blocked off by a gated neighborhood.  Shucks.

Luckily, Chuck Norris was more obliging, and only had a gate blocking his driveway, not the whole neighborhood.  Here's his house as we saw it...

Okay, so it's not much to look at (especially with this poor photo that was taken while I was driving, and shows more of the fence than the house).  From the road it looks rather small, and the front is in the middle of a lot of construction work.  BUT, when we turned the corner, we realized that the house went a lot deeper back than you might think.  Just check out this sky view from the website we used to find the house...

Tricky, Chuck Norris.  Very tricky...

Adventure #5: Seeing Where John F. Kennedy was Assassinated


Yes, unfortunately, besides the football, the thing that Dallas is famous for is that it is the sight where John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Hannah and I drove down to Dealey Plaza this morning, and to be honest, it was quite a surreal experience to stand on the grassy knoll, in the spot where the Zapruder film was taken, and look out over the scene.  It was like stepping into one of the most iconic photographs in American history...

The painted "X" marks where JFK was shot

The Grassy Knoll

The Texas School Book Depository

The sixth floor of the building, where Lee Harvey Oswald shot the bullets from, is now a museum, but we didn't want to pay the steep admission charge and contented ourselves to walk around the scene.

On a less serious note, we also walked around the adjacent West End of Dallas, and saw silly things like this dinosaur on stilts:

 And then, on the way back, we swung by SMU to take Hannah's picture by the giant mesh head in front of the art museum...because you just don't pass something like that up.

And that, my friends, concludes the highlights of Hannah's visit.  Of course, there were several things that weren't documented in photographic form, but I think that this post is sufficiently lengthy, don't you?

And now, back to the reality of the daily grind.  Homework all day tomorrow...hopefully, with the renewed energy that a family visit can create :)