Friday Five

Five Things That I am Sort of Super Proud Of.

5. My vanilla-hazelnut coffee blend: this is by no means anything cool or impressive. I just really really like Einstein Bros. vanilla hazelnut coffee and the departure of the Einstein Bros. from our student center was really cramping my style this year. So I decided it was time to put on my big girl pants and make my own coffee. For the first time. (Call me a princess, but I just sort of assumed that someone else would make my coffee for me for my whole life. That dream is done.) So, basically, all of this is to say that I'm really proud of the fact that I can buy Folgers brand vanilla and hazelnut flavored coffee grounds and mix them together. It's a big deal to me, alright?

4. My heritage: everyone knows I'm from Texas. I make sure of that. I love it, and I am all kinds of proud to be from the greatest nation in the world. And every time you talk about this "Six Flags" you have here in Georgia, I will tell you the origin of the park and the meaning of it's name and list all six flags in order of appearance, regardless of if I've told you before or not. More important than where I come from, though, is who I come from - I am proud as all get out of my family and the values that they have passed down from generation to generation that make me who I am. The majority of my jewelry is heirloom, passed down from my mom and grandma, and I love that it reminds me of the great women who wore it before me and the loving men that gifted it to them.

3. My bookshelf: not to brag, but it's pretty ballin'. I take tons and tons of pictures of my various books/bookshelves, trying (usually failing) to be artsy and cool and Madi. A girl can dream.

2. My babies: I got the mom gene pretty hard. (Not to be confused with mom jeans. I try to stay away from those.) I like to take care of people, then I get really proud of them when they turn out AWESOME under my tutelage. The kids I led in small groups at church, my confirmation kiddos, my 6th 7th grade girls (they grow up so fast!), my EL babies; they all make me so proud that I want to burst and tell everyone "I know them! I know them!"

1. This here little blag: starting off, I never imagined anyone other than my parents and grandparents (and probably the mahjong ladies) would read my incoherent thoughts. Then I came to a technical institute and my incoherent thoughts became more than just a hobby, they became a necessity. I'm proud to have retained this appreciation of words and the freedom of language at a stage in my life where accuracy and numbers and computers and formulas and proficiency are considered "the most important thing".

0. My God: I belong to Him? *brushes shoulders off*

What are you proud of?

booksandbooksandbooks

I've spent countless hours thinking about goals for this semester/year. Some are silly, some are serious, some benefit me, some benefit others, some are big, some are small. Given my track record on things like new years' resolutions and diets that perpetually start tomorrow, I'm working extra hard to follow through on these goals. I guess you could call it a goal to achieve my goals...

Anyway, one of the most prevalent things I think of over and over again is the fact that I want to do stuff. I've been living in Atlanta, a super cool city, for two years now and I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of all that's available to do. Cue this morning's excursion to the Decatur Book Festival with the roomie. It was a Molly Cook dream come true. There were books, authors, and giant crossword puzzles everywhere. And I got a Michael Jackson paper doll fo' free. Step one on my journey to do stuff: complete.

So here's to book festivals, and here's to this blag keeping me accountable for reaching my goals.

Friday Five

Five Literary Characters That I Think I Could Actually Be Friends With.
Let's be honest, there are some characters that I'd definitely love to be friends with that probably wouldn't give me the time of day. There are also some characters that I would hate to be friends with. There are also characters like Aslan that don't need to be mentioned because WHO DOESN'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH ASLAN?

*this was hard. there are lots of characters that I really want to be friends with. these are in no particular order. also, it's weird trying to defend why you would want to be friends with someone...

5. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice. Sort of bad at making first impressions, mildly socially inept, but a great friend once made? Sounds strikingly like the Picnic Club. Really, though, Mr. Darcy is probably the Pride and Prejudice character that I feel I relate to most. Please appreciate this major breakthrough on my part, since every girl in the world wants to be Elizabeth Bennet (or at least they should) and it takes a lot to accept that one might not exactly be Lizzy material.

4. Dagny Taggart, Atlas Shrugged. Dagny takes care of business. I feel like she would be the friend that I would automatically lock eyes with when group work was announced because I would know that she'd leave me alone to do my part and that I could trust her to do her part. Then we would finish the project before everyone else and use the extra time to talk about stuff and solve the world's problems. In pencil skirts. Very stylishly without being stylish.

3. Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter. I feel like this would be one of those opposite enough to be entertaining but alike enough to work out friendships. Ginny seems to be braver and brassier than I am, especially in the later books, but she's smart and collected about it. As much as I'd love to be friends with book Hermione, she would get on my nerves. And book Harry is too busy being angsty and killing Voldemort and whatnot to make and retain many new friends. Ginny, though, we would click.

2. Rosie Cotton, The Lord of the Rings. Rosie Cotton is the hobbit that Sam ends up marrying at the end of the adventure. Despite dreams of being a graceful warrior elf or a crazy awesome Nazgul slayer woman, I think my disposition is rather more suited towards being a hobbit. Rosie and I could dance with ribbons in our hair, eat second breakfasts, and drink tea while our husband hobbits tilled the yard and tended the garden.

1. Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird. Let's face it, I was a prime candidate for bossing around. You could call it "easygoing" or "reserved" or "a sweet child", but it all boils down to being really good at having people tell you what to do. I was that girl, and Scout would be a perfect boss. We would be friends because we're both smart, but I would be decidedly less interesting and Scout would convince me take part in antics that I would never do on my own.

0. Vicky Austin, A Ring of Endless Light. Sorry, I had to include one more. Ahem, "Vicky shares a similar personality to Madeleine L'Engle. Both share a passion for literature and poetry, and use writing to express their ideas as well as their emotions. In addition, both struggle with the problem of evil, but ultimately believe in the existence of a loving God" (Wikipedia). Plus she can talk to dolphins. I think it would work out quite well.

Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart!*

*yes, I have had this scene from Anastasia on repeat in my mind all week.

Threes were the theme of our visit to Paris.

We took three bike tours. Three. Now, I am not a bike tourist, but I did my best. The first was a day tour of the city, hitting most of the highlights and big sights. The second was a tour of the grounds and gardens of Versailles, and by far my favorite despite the chilly/drizzly weather. After biking along wide paths through the grounds and we got to stop alongside the channel for a picnic. An Australian shared her nougat with us and a Pittsburghian told me the best way to learn French was to get a French boyfriend. (By this logic, the best way to learn emag is to get an electromagnetic boyfriend. Hit me up, all you electrifying fella's.) The third tour was a night tour, meaning we were navigating the streets of Paris during the busiest time for both motor and pedestrian traffic. On bikes. In a herd of people (mainly flight attendants). All in yellow vests. Except me, who for some unknown reason was given an orange vest. This was not my favorite, but I did it. I bike toured thrice in three days. And patted myself on the back and bought a Fat Tire Bike Tours cap to congratulate myself. Huzzah!

I went three times to art museums. Our first night (Friday) the Louvre was open late, so my parents and I went for a preliminary walk through. This ended up being one of our best ideas, since the crowds around the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, and other bigshots were nowhere near what they were like when we went back Monday morning. And since we had already checked those off the list on Friday night, we got to spend our visit on Monday morning in the less crowded wings where we saw the Lacemaker and Hammurabi's Code. (Call me crazy, but I was jump-up-and-down excited to see Hammurabi's Code whereas the rest of my family took it like champs. I credit Mrs. Marler.) Double the Louvre, double the love. Visit number three was to Musee L'Orsay, where Impressionists and others are displayed in an old train station. Saw some Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, and my favorite, Degas. Pretty dang cool.

We had glaces from three different shops. One was a sidewalk stand on Rue Cler - our home base. I got chocolate and berry cheesecake. The next was another cafe on Rue Cler (that ended up being a chain, but what evs, they made the ice cream look like flowers in the cone). I got chocolate and nutella. The third was during our night bike tour - definitely the highlight of the tour - from a little cafe near the neighborhood where Johnny Depp either lived or lives. I got Cacoa Intense 65% Noir (uhh - yum) and the inevitable mis-order. Mirabelle. It sounded so lovely, but ended up being a sort of peach sorbet. That's not ice cream, y'all. So I ate the chocolate scoop off the top and gave the rest to my mom.

I ordered three drinks from three different Starbucks on three different days in order to utilize their free wifi to check Twitter (a must) and avert crisis, aka, buy Feast For Crows after finishing Storm of Swords. Earl Grey, caffe latte, caffe noir, if you were wondering.

Brandon asked me three times where I got my sweater vest. It's from the Gap.

And of course other things happened that weren't in threes. Such as seeing the Eiffel Tower, buying pants when my legs were cold, eating lots of chocolate, buying corkscrews double the cost of wine, eating lots of bread, strolling through gardens, browsing street markets, many metros, sibling Game of Thrones reading siestas, and the like.

Winter is Coming

In middle school, I read like a boy. All the book needed was a dragon on the cover or eight more books in the series or multiple subtitles in swirly fonts and I would read it. That is, until one fateful day of eighth grade when my love of fantasy novels was tainted forever. 

After finishing some lame powerpoint assignment about hurricanes that included the use of hyperlinks - woah, dang - in Ms. Parker's class, I got my agenda signed specifically to go to the library for the next book in the Shannara series by Terry Brooks. (I kid you not, this is what Wikipedia says about the series: "...chronicles the adventures of brothers Shea and Flick Ohmsford in their quest to retrieve the Sword of Shannara to defeat the Warlock Lord who threatens the Four Lands". You'd best believe I ate this fantasy gold up.) As is wont with series of this nature, there were about fifty bajillion different side stories and parallel tellings and prequels and sequels. I had no idea which book came next. Naive eighth grader as I was, and still believing that every single librarian knew every single thing about every single book, I decided to ask the Librarian With the Missing Finger for help. She took a glance at the shelf/series I inquired about, and disdainfully tossed her head away saying, "Oh, I don't read those books." I know for a fact that my face flushed bright red as I shoved books back on the shelf in Dewey Decimal order as quickly as possible, jetting out of the door without anything to take home. Those books were not good books. Those books were not adult books. To ever be taken as seriously about books as a librarian, I could never read those books again. And I never did. Barring the last two books of the Inheritance Cycle, I have steered clear of dragons and knights and magical creatures ever since.

Fast forward six years and imagine my elation at the realization that THEY MAKE FANTASY BOOKS FOR ADULTS. You know how I know they're for adults? The TV series is on HBO! That's adult-y! Yes, folks, I am slightly obsessed with the A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series. It's good to be back in the fantasy world again. And it's even better to be in the middle of the series while I'm in Europe, crawling around castles and the like. Plus, the show is conveniently at my fingertips thanks to the file sharing provided by my French dorm. Thank heavens for the mass amount of time spent on trains this summer, where it is socially acceptable to read for hours on end without talking to anyone, and for the nights free from responsibility, where I can cozy up in bed with a mug of tea and watch back-to-back episodes.

So take that, Librarian With the Missing Finger. Maybe you should give those books a chance, or at least try not to dissuade middle schoolers from reading them. Anything and everything that gets kids excited about reading is worthy literature.

Bookish

My mother scolded me at the mall today when I started looking at a book fair set up in the middle of the walkway instead of shopping for clothes. Her entreaties eventually managed to tear me away from the rows and rows of slightly used books, but I would have been more than content to remain perusing for hours. I did manage to snag dollar copies of The Grapes of Wrath and Paradise Lost before being whisked away to try on countless more party dresses. I feel like things usually work the other way around...

This, my friends, is what we would call characteristic.

Recommended Reading

I finished reading same kind of different as me today. It took me all of three days, and that included massive hauls of studying in between chapters. I was supposed to read it a long time ago, having had it recommended to me over and over, but that little contrarian inside took over and refused to budge the book from its place on the shelf. (Yes, this does happen quite often.)

Now, after having read it, I am so glad that I did. Powerful and moving, the story grips you and does not let go. The incredible faith of the principle subjects knocks you off your rocker and leaves you inspired. Perhaps, though, the thing I respect most about this book is that never once was I made to feel guilty for what I have. So often, radical Christians preach guilt and shame to the haves, garnering only superficial giving for the have-nots. True, honest, giving comes from the heart, not from shame. God has blessed us not that we may spurn His blessing, but that we may use it to bless others.

"So in a way, we is all homeless - just workin our way toward home."

I'm Thankful For...

...grace that is greater than all our sin, the love of a family, weekly crossword puzzles, musicals, family traditions, a sassy cat and a sweet pup, friends that either understand my crazy speak or at least act like they do, mugs of hot tea, books by the thousands, escapism, our founding fathers, the Food Network, themed parties, Texas, brisk autumns, sense of humor, quality TV, browsing excursions, the freedom to have an opinion and, more importantly, disagree with others, Southern Living, chocolate so dark the first bite makes you cringe, means of communication, holidays, creative minds, wisdom, getting letters in the mail, memories, painfully delicous food, dreams, esoteric simple pleasures, movies, genuine compliments, Pilot G2 07's, experiences that stick with you for life.

How Sweet it Is

I just concluded writing a paper all about aspartame and how it's made. Interesting stuff, really. All of the components occur naturally, but aspartame doesn't naturally form from them. That means that huge vats of bactera are mass produced to harvest the amino acids necessary for aspartame production. That's called fermentation. Then, said amino acids are modified and mix in another huge vat for a day at room temperature and another day at 65 C. Everything then gets cooled and reacts with acetic acid to make aspartame. That's called synthesis. Then they purify and crystallize it and, ta da! lovely, powdery, low-cal sweetener with 200x the sweetening power of sucrose.

I'm taking my inordinate interest in the production of aspartame as a much needed sign that I do belong at an institute of technology rather than at hoggy warty Hogwarts.

The owl carrying my acceptance letter must have taken a seven year detour. There's just no other explanation...

Apparency

You know you're not in Texas when the Pace is found on the "Ethnic Food" aisle.

You know you've crossed some sort of line when your new favorite section of Barnes and Noble is the Reference section.

Why November Might Possibly Be the Best Month This Year

Guess who has two thumbs and stood in line to get her ticket to the special 9:00 Thursday night showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One today? This girl.

Simple Pleasures

I have always been a goober for simple pleasures. Today, these things in particular have made me happy:

- ice cold milk in my cereal
- a Pumpkin Spice Latte to accompany some morning Barnes and Noble browsing
- crewneck sweatshirts
- discovering the $1 Dover Thrift Edition's on some obscure shelf

- a Jane Austen address book
- blog comments from weeks ago that I haven't seen until now - Emily, I am so glad that you like Bright Eyes! I have a Canon Powershot SX210 IS, and I'm still figuring out how to use it best. Sorry for the delayed response :)
- receiving letters from friends back home
- writing letters to friends far away
- Oliver Twist
- a new room reconfiguration

- Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper and popcorn
- seeing that Kevin from Top Chef will be at Taste of Atlanta, fueling my desire to buy a ticket
- GT Night at the High is in t minus 30 minutes
- finally making it to Revelation Day!

Reading

One of the toughest parts of college, other than making new friends and changing sheets on a lofted bed, is finding time to read. I've always loved to read, so for sanity's sake I make time during my week to read for pleasure, aka something other than a textbook. At the moment, I'm about halfway through Oliver Twist. It helps to immerse myself in Dicken's world after a difficult Calculus lecture or a frustrating Biology lab, even if it's only for the paltry satisfaction of knowing someone else is having a worse off time than I am. And so I read for enjoyment, exhilaration, and escape.

19.09.2010 BJ Novak stand-up performance: the best way to start off a week.

20.09.2010 Catching up with Oliver before Calc recitation.

A Photographic Journey

In a quest to become a better photographer, I recently purchased a book on digital photography from Barnes and Noble. Among other more tedious things, it told me to start up a project as a way to practice and gauge progress. Coincidentally, I've recently been impressed by a few of my friends who are taking a picture a day for 365 days. And so my project begins: a self portrait for every day I remember to take a self portrait. Seems doable...

16.09.2010 Studying Calculus in one of my favorite shirts. Why? It's soft, it's Bright Eyes, and it actually belongs to my brother, which rather ranks me in the class of girls who wear their brother's old concert shirts.

17.09.2010 Perched on my lofted bed in some comfy sneaks.

As an unrelated side note, I love the way that I laugh everytime I accidentally type "me" instead of "my" because it makes me sound like a pirate. And, yes, this does happen a lot.

Back By Popular Demand

And when I say popular demand, I mean one person inquired as to where my blog went. (Thanks, SB!)

Starting day one, I have kept a running tally of things I forgot to bring to college. Most of the items are mundane, everyday necessities that you don't realize are necessities until you live without them. The Texas flag, for example. Other things are more creative, like my sticker box and my markers. To boot, I somehow made it to college with a grand total of 3 pencils, one of which I have lost and another that I have no means to sharpen. That leaves me with one pencil.

I also forgot to bring my parents, my friends, my full-sized bed, my map of the world shower curtain, my entire book collection, my pets, more than half of my wardrobe, my favorite high school teachers, my costume collection, my church.

Leaving things behind is tough...