Professions

Yes, I am guilty. So, so, guilty. Of professor crushes. Up until now there have just been one or two per semester, but with this particular class load I have hit the jackpot of adorable little foreign science/math nerd men that should have action figures made of them. Which, by the way, I've realized is one my highest forms of regard - the desire to have an action figure made of someone. Weird, I know.

My Materials professor is from India and has a full beard and wears a turban. He says things like uh-LOY instead of alloy, but my favorite has to be Potashium and Franshium instead of Potassium and Francium. Gotta love it.

My Statics professor introduced himself as "Hoo-lee-ahn REE-mo-lEE, but ju weel say 'Jew-lee-uhn Ruh-MOW-li'". He's basically adorbs. His hair moves up and down when he writes on the board, he wears glasses, and all of his shirts have two pockets.

My Physics professor is studly. He wears Crocodile Dundee hats and Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned just enough to allow for tufts of silver chest hair to cascade like cataracts (the waterfall kind, not the ocular clouding kind). He also has a luxurious silver 'stache and flowing silver hair that protrudes from his ever present hat. He laughs at his own jokes and trails off into incoherent mumbling when talking about more physics than we're expected to know, but that he wants to talk about anyway.

My Diff Eq professor looks like a dead ringer for an elder relative of Mr. Ratburn. His eyebrows and mustache look like the same image copied and pasted onto three parts of his face. He wears cardigans or, rather, a cardigan, since it's been the same one every day so far. He instructs us to "eh-study" the "recipes" for solving equations in order to find the "keeler", because solving differential equations is a lot like solving murders. He's a fan of solid analogies. And he refers to Calculus as magic. And his name is Rafael de la Llave - just roll the r's and turn Llave into a very loud "YAAAH - vay" for the full effect.

Professor. Love.
I honestly cannot wait for Invite Your Professor to Lunch day.

Sole Searching

I am in love with shoes. It starts with boots, but it certainly doesn't end there. I firmly believe in shoe shopping as a panacea. This is why:

1. Shoes are easy to try on. Maybe I'm lazy, but there's nothing I detest more than having to find an open dressing room, change out of my street clothes, fiddle with hangers and buttons and zippers and snaps and straps and bows, venture out to the three way mirror, take it all off, turn it all rightside out, hang everything back up, lather, rinse, repeat.

2. Feet stop growing, for the most part. There's no worse feeling than discovering you've gone up a dress size - or two - even if you can blame it on the brand running small. Feet are grounded (hee hee) at a certain size, and even if you cried yourself to sleep in middle school because of your seemingly abnormally humongous feet, there's solace in the fact that they aren't getting bigger any time soon. And you can still wear those shoes you bought amidst the tears in 7th grade.

3. Liberation. When's the last time you heard someone say, "I'm really hankering for some double dark chocolate ice cream with rainbow morsels, but probably shouldn't get any. I'm trying to watch my shoe size"?

Positivities

Here are some truly positive things that have happened recently:

1. The Star Wars mug that I've been eyeing at Barnes and Noble finally went on sale and I bought it for only five dollars. What a steal.
2. Dinner on Friday night turned into an adventure.
3. My friends and cyberfriends have posted some rad blogs.
4. We finally got to Gauss' Law in physics, and now have nothing to sphere but sphere itself.
5. Mail!
6.Our impromptu dinner cooking last night was delicious.
7. I got complimented on my computer programming. Yes, you read that correctly.
8. Phone calls to best friends.
9. The Super Bowl is in Dallas tonight, and I get to tell everyone that the Packers' second string quarterback went to my high school. Booya, bragging rights.
10. When I put pictures up on Facebook, people "Like" them - such a confidence booster.
11. I'm slowly but surely honing my skills to recognize which movie score is playing on Pandora before switching tabs to check my guess.

12. Angel gave me a discount at Barnes and Noble, plus I bought the $20 for $10 Groupon and still have gift cards leftover from graduation and birthday, so I'm set with store credit for awhile.

13. Communion and a baptism at church today. It was a double whammy.

14. Tomorrow is Charles Dickens Day.

I Know the Meaning of These Nineteen Years*

*The title of this post is taken from Les Miserables song lyrics that have been stuck in my head all day. I don't know the meaning of life. Coincidentally, though, I have been alive for nineteen years. Which brings us to...

Today was my birthday. I woke up kind of dreading it. It was my first birthday away from home. I knew that my dad was planning to come to Atlanta and take me to see Beauty and the Beast at the Fantastic Fox Theater, but at the time I went to bed it was still up in the air as to whether or not his flight would be cancelled (pun always intended). Needless to say, not a great feeling to wake up with. Then I decided to make some tea and I spilled my entire electric tea kettle full of warming water on the ground. Oh boy. And because of the snowpocalypse I had no breakfast food in my room, forcing me to eat the top of a Chick-Fil-A bun instead. Then I read my Jesus Calling for January 13, 2011 and it was like Sarah Young knew I was going to be alone on my birthday for the very first time. She says, in God's perspective, "Thank Me for this day of life, recognizing that it is a precious, unrepeatable gift. Trust that I am with you each moment, whether you sense my presence or not." After reading that, I decided to thank God for my birthday each time I started internally whining. Can you believe my day got better? Because it sure did.

First of all, my morning classes were already cancelled, but I got an email announcing that my afternoon lab was cancelled as well. So, I watched two episodes of Friday Night Lights - Season One, my new TV obsession. I decided that I could marry Matt Seracen. Just might, if given the chance. Then the mass influx of Facebook "happy birthday!"s came. For the first time ever, I made it a point to individually thank everyone for the birthday wishes. It really made me realize how blessed with friends I am, even if this was the first time I'd heard from some of these people since middle school. Not to play favorites, but I was really impressed by the sentiments from Robert Goulet's wife, Vera. The mail at GaTech was finally up and running, so I was able to pick up a package which had been sitting there since finals week. Yes, it was from one of my best friends. And yes, it was an instrumental Whitney Houston CD. After some quality Big/Little study time my dad arrived! He came bearing gifts, even though I asked for nothing but Beauty and the Beast and Rose Festival. So, I opened my Hot Tamales, 8 gig flash drive, journal, and Bananagrams before getting ready for the evening. The Evening = Molly, Dad, Roomie, and Big all bundling up and braving the icy sidewalks to walk to dinner and then the Fox. May I say, stunning? gorgeous? unbelievable? And I'm not just talking about the girls, har har har. The Fox was breathtaking. And the show was such fun. And I would say more but I'm saving it for a time when I'm not blogging 'til my eyelids droop shut. (Jonathan Toomey, anyone?)

Long story short, birthday was made great by the plethora of simple pleasures gracing every turn.

In other, yet related, news, I've decided to start a Project 365! One picture a day for a whole entire year. Being my birthday, today is the first day, but forgive me for not uploading and editing the picture yet.

Studying Up

Let the finals frenzy begin. This week, fondly referred to as "Dead Week", will see every spare minute devoted either to relearning all that I ever wanted to know about analytical calculus and linear algebra, or some well deserved study breaks. Sounds enticing. And study breaks are kind of my specialty. On that note, thank heavens for the timely start of the new season of The Sing-Off (pun intended). There's nothing better than battling A Capella groups to alleviate a brain mushed by convergence tests. Just banking on first impressions, I'm pulling for Committed and Street Corner Symphony. And the Whiffenpoofs and Jerry Lawson & Talk of the Town. Gotta keep my options open.

The I's Have It

I take back every single bellyaching comment I have ever made about having to practice piano.

I award Miss SB 10 points for being a champion Googler.

I declare tomorrow a national holiday because I'm finally getting an actual roommate.

I should be studying for my biology test.

Title

I used to have a Twitter account named Calamity Molly, because I had just watched Calamity Jane and all of the cooler names that incorporated Molly were already in use. But then I got nonconformist and deleted my Twitter, just for the grounds of saying, "Twitter? Oh, I used to do that".

I used to have a blog named A Displaced Texan, because I had big dreams of telling the world how a Texan girl, through and through, was adjusting to life in Georgia. But after my Russia trip I got really hesitant to blog, so I deleted the whole thing, I think because I needed more time to process the trip before sharing my experiences than I originally allowed myself.

So here I am again, eating my words for the umpteenth time, Tweeting and blogging, this time under a new name. I didn't realize until setting up my new Twitter that I had such an awesome pun built into my name - and I've always pined after a cool name pun or nickname or the like. My middle name, Claire, can be put in front of my first name, Molly, in such a way that it sounds like "Clearly Molly", giving me much delight. Yes, I am a little obsessed with my newfound name pun, just because so many things happen to me that could only happen to me - they're Clairely Molly.