hello i am cold

1. Franklin College has an organic food buffet for $7 that always includes nonfat FroYo. Today's flavor was Mounds Bar. Mm.

2. Rivers Cuomo wrote one of the songs on Adam Lambert's new album. As if I weren't already excited enough! His first single is so danceable! It's going on my workout mix.

3. I almost started crying while reading one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's love sonnets to my class. Predictably, it was "How do I love thee, let me count the ways..." Tomorrow is Tennyson's "Ulysses" and I fear I'll have the same problem.

4. My mental "happy place" is next summer's trip to Europe. Other than the Netherlands, I don't know where else I'm going. But I kind of want to travel about. For like a month. Why not--I have the summer off! I guess I'll need to save up more money, though.

5. Can we just HAVE GAY MARRIAGE RIGHTS NOW? What is the EFFING PROBLEM!?! GIVE IT.

Haven't done this in a while: wanted to see if anyone was out there lurking and wanted to be on my friends list! I write about my students and classes and whatnot in friends-locked posts. I also post my to-do lists to a select group of I believe four people, because they (the to-do lists, not the four people) are very boring. If you would like to be friended, just affirm that you aren't one of my students, and I'm happy to add you! Also, if you like boring to-do lists, let me know and I'll add you to that filter.

I have an item on my to-do list that reads "theme mix cd thingy." I am ready to sit down and make some CDs and cross that off! I was wondering if anyone was in the mood to do a CD mix exchange. I have a car with a six-CD changer and there are only so many times I can listen to the new Daughtry album. (The number of times seems to be approximately five hundred thousand. But still.)

My favorite kind of mixes are theme mixes. For instance, the one I would probably send out would be a CD I made for a wine tasting trip, all about wine and drinking and drunkinesses. Artists represented include Dean Martin, the Cardigans, Willie Nelson, Death Cab, and Amy Winehouse. Also there's a song called "Fuck You, I'm Drunk." Yes, something for everyone! I've also made frog-themed and monkey-themed mixes before. And didn't someone on TUS make mixes based on Tarot cards?

Anyway, if anyone wants to trade CDs with me/each other, let me know in the comments.

It's been a very busy (but fun!) couple of weeks of traveling. First, we spent a week in Cabo, at a timeshare, for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. (And... I already wrote about that. Well, here it is again.) My older sister Conny and her son Christian joined us, along with Tiffany's mom Jackie. (The whole gang can be seen here.)

My parents were in fine form. My mother told the timeshare people that they had four daughters, and that Tiffany and Caroline were both engaged to men back home. (Elijah she explained away by saying Tiffany had been married before.) When the timeshare people continued asking questions such as, why does everyone have a different last name? Why does Conny have an accent? Tiffany (who was unwilling to lie in the first place) just said, "It's complicated."

We were teasing my Mom by telling this story at our family party this weekend, and she turned to Jackie and said, "Well, it was basically the truth." No, we explained, it is not "basically the truth." Then she introduced David and Tyler as my "friends from high school." Oh, Mom.

I had some great conversations with Conny when she was in San Francisco and she was asking why we don't speak up more when our parents do things like this. I explained that not only do they not really listen to you, you have to choose your battles. It took like a year to get my dad to stop sending mail to "Mrs. Ian Golder"! Plus, I only have to deal with them in short bursts, and I would rather use my parents as a source of comedy than angst, you know? Conny's spending three weeks with them pretty much non-stop, so she's got a totally different experience going.

Anyway after we got back from Cabo, Conny flew up here for a super short visit; she'd never seen San Francisco. She LOVED it here. I'm sorry we didn't get to see more, but we did a lot of good things: walking around the Mission and Chinatown, shopping for souvenirs, mai tais at the Empress of China, Baker Beach and Fort Point to see the Golden Gate Bridge (I had never been to either of those vista points; I will go back as soon as I replace my camera!) (oh yeah, I lost my camera and all my equipment in a shady taxicab in Cabo... let's not talk about it). We had dinner in the Castro (and saw naked men on the street), brunch at La Note, dim sum in Chinatown, tapas with Jen Wade, and went to Coit Tower and Lombard Street. Oh, and the view from Treasure Island, of course! We packed a lot into 36 hours!

After that, both Conny and I flew back to L.A. for the aforementioned family party. Brian came to that too. My favorite parts were trading stories about my parents, swimming and chatting with Brian, and staying up late, after everyone had left, drinking and talking with Conny into the wee hours. I was exhausted the next day, but it was worth it. I feel like I really got to know her better. It was hard to say goodbye. I'll see her next summer in Haarlem (meaning the city in the Netherlands, not a typo) because she's getting married. But of course, there's going to be a lot less one-on-one time there!

(Oh, and I forgot to mention that my nephew fell in love with me while I was in L.A. He got on the phone yesterday to ask when I was coming back. "Mo come home?" He also refused to drive to the family party with his moms, and insisted on riding with me, even though I was driving my parents' minivan with no seat belt, no air conditioning, the turn radius of a tanker truck, and a maximum speed of 45. My sister is going to have to get a webcam so we can Skype!) 

Now I'm back and have a ton of stuff to catch up on, but I'm not traveling anywhere until we go camping at the end of August. Can that possibly be right? Brian might come to visit at some point, but other than that, nothing's planned. My cousin is in Boston, so maybe I'll go there. I know I'll be happy to spend at least a couple of weeks at home, but going too long without traveling makes me itchy.

I would love to illustrate this with a picture of our trip to Cabo, but one of the things that happened on the trip was that I lost my camera and all my camera equipment and everything in a shady taxicab. Actually the first day of the trip was wretchedly awful and ended with me in tears and the camera was the least of it, so let's just skip all of that part and move on to the rest of the trip, which was fabulous. (Plus, at least I lost my camera before I took a bunch of pictures, not after.)

It was a party for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and I really hope there is some video of my parents on someone's camera somewhere that I can post. They parasailed, you guys. My parents parasailed. It was my parents, me and Ian, my sister Caroline, Tiffany, Elijah, Tiff's mom, my other sister Conny (short for Cornelia, by the way), and one of her kids (Christian, who is now 13). This is the first time that Elijah has confidently been able to say anything resembling my name, so I got to hear "hi Mo" all weekend, as well as "Mo, come!" when he wanted me to swim on over and play a game with him. I hope there is a video of that, too.

The timeshare thing was super shady; the rest of the fam spent two days sitting through awful presentations so they could get coupons for things that they later had to argue to be able to redeem. But the pools were lovely, the ocean was awesome and gorgeous, and we had a two-bedroom air-conditioned condo all to ourselves (Ian and I did, I mean). We went into town and had fish tacos and carnitas and margaritas, we went on a glass bottom boat ride, and I read a lot of Princess Diaries books next to the pool(s). The all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink Mexican fiesta on our last night actually ended up being pretty fun, and I think my parents really had a wonderful time; all of it (even arguing with timeshare people) is right up their alley.

Today I am trying to catch up on school (please note the amount of grading that has piled up; it is truly frightening). Tomorrow my sister Conny is flying out by herself to escape my parents spend a couple of days seeing San Francisco. Then we are flying back to L.A. on Saturday, and having one final family party on Sunday (Ian is not going this time). Then on Monday I come back and have class again, so I'd better get to that grading, don't you think? In the meantime, here is my to-do list...

( Busy summer! )

Feels a little bit more manageable than last week; but lots of stuff to get done today!

Oh, one of the things on here is to go to a nursery and get garden advice. Maybe I can also ask you, my livejournal friends. Ian wants to try growing some vegetables; I would like to try growing pretty flowers that are difficult to kill. Someone said that rather than "tilling" the "soil," the best thing to do is just put some good soil on top of your old crappy soil (maybe with some kind of edging? What does one use? Brick? Wood?) and then going from there. Any basic advice for the very very very very inexperienced gardener?

( So feel free to skip, or read! )

Temporarily relocated here, for those of you who read. Thanks for updating your links!

I think I have life whiplash.

( Here is some cut text... )

Well, we're living at the new place! In case you didn't know, a few weeks ago we started thinking about looking for another apartment. And we liked the first place we saw so much, we just decided to go for it. We have both the old place and the new place for all of May, which means we're moving slowly, basically. But on Saturday, Ian rented a U-Haul, and he and his friend Lance moved all the big furniture, including important things like our bed. So we have no internet in the new house yet, but other than that, we're pretty committed.

There's one negative to the new place, which is the shower. The shower is both tiny and ugly. And the tiles are peach. I took one last shower at the old house this weekend, and mourned the loss of the big claw-foot tub and the cool shower curtain concept. Now I get an ugly siding door. Sigh.

But other than that, the new place is SO AWESOME. It's a small house that we have to ourselves, which means no more neighbors playing skee ball right above our bedroom when we're trying to sleep, or vomiting on our porch. It's full of light, whereas the old place was kind of dark. It seems HUGE in comparison to our tiny old apartment. Walking from the bedroom to the front door seems like SUCH AN ADVENTURE. We have to go through multiple rooms to get there! Our old place had one closet. JUST ONE. The new place has closets galore; I hardly know what to do with them. I'm getting used to the idea that we can actually put stuff away in closets.

We can paint the new place, which is causing me paint selection angst, but is still very cool. (The bedroom colors turned out great, for instance.) The landlord is really super nice. There's a patio, and we will be getting patio furniture and probably a barbecue, so we can have a housewarming BBQ over the summer. But I think my favorite thing might be having our own washer and dryer. In the house. That we can use. Any time. Without needing quarters. This morning before I left for work, I threw in a load of laundry! IT IS LIKE A MIRACLE.

So yeah, there's still a ton of painting and unpacking to do, and the old place is still full of stuff and there's a lot of work to be done. But it's very exciting all the same. And now, the to-do list, and I feel like I've already forgotten 20 items so you know it's just going to get longer...

( Another long long long to-do list... )

So, my mother and father went on a three-week cruise around South America for their 40th wedding anniversary. (We'll also be celebrating over the summer with a family reunion of sorts at a time share in Cabo; my older sister Conny is flying from Holland to attend. Hopefully swine flu will not wreak havoc on this plan.) I called her to hear all about the cruise, and knowing that it might be worth passing on, I also sat at my keyboard and typed. I left out about 50 uses of the word "wonderful." Also, as you will see, she did not tell this story in order. But here it is!

On the last night of the cruise, I tried escargot for the first time and I really liked it! it wasn't in the snail houses, you know, it was on a plate in little circles. So you didn't get the memory of the snails in the little snail houses. But it was still very good!

We got off the ship and I got some sandwiches from the buffet and put them in my purse to bring them into the town. You aren't supposed to take any food from the ship and take it off the ship. But I did it anyway. I did it three times but they never stopped me or asked me for anything I had! So I guessed it didn't matter.

Oh and Dad and I danced a lot at night. The couple that stayed up late with us was Joyce and Arnie. [My parents made friends with three other couples, who would eat together and play cards and go dancing and go swimming together. I didn't catch the other names!] So we'd stay up late with them. dancing until one or two in the morning. And there was a carnival on board. there was a big ceremony when we crossed the equator, King Neptune and all that kind of thing. A big ceremony.

It was the Norwegian Sun ship. Some of our friends on board said that there were bigger ships out there, but it was big enough for us!

And we had wonderful weather and wonderful food and wonderful tours. And there's this church, I think it was in Costa Rica, I'm not sure. The church. And they buried all the people in the catacombs under the church, so people can pray for them in the church, and they're closer to God. Oh, Dad said it was in Peru. And they buried 75,000 people in the catacombs. And you see the bones and all that stuff! In the 19th century... or was it the 20th? Well, whatever. I think it was the 19th. The mayor of the town decided there was no more room, so now only big dignitaries get buried down there.

Oh Santiago was a huge city, very metropolitan. with a wonderful transportation system. I'm not going in order, but Santiago had a wonderful transportation system. We were in the Best Western hotel there and we asked the front desk if they had a tour and the guy said "my cousin has a van and speaks good English. he can give you a tour." We had a tour brochure that told us how much the tours cost, and he combined the two tours, the wine tour and the city tour, and he combined the two tours for very cheap. It was his cousin Carlos who came the next morning drove us wherever we wanted to go, and it was wonderful. And then we said, Carlos, take us to your favorite restaurant! And we had a wonderful meal like the locals. And I said there's an ice cream store! I'd like an ice cream, Carlos. And he said okay and pulled over. So you wouldn't get that on a tour with a lot of people. An ice cream like that.

The service on a cruise is like... wow, they service you like you're a queen and king! In the morning we'd go to breakfast and they'd make up the room and then at night when we're having dinner, they come and put down the sheets and put a chocolate on it, and they even give you clean towels at night! In the morning you get clean towels and at the night you get clean towels. I was in a restaurant one night and said do you have a toothpick, and she walked half the ship over to the next restaurant and brought a couple of toothpicks over! They just do anything. There was one time at night when we were upstairs by the garden cafe and I had some hot chocolate and I said do you have any cinnamon to put on it? And they said we have it in the back! It's amazing! They just do anything you want! Even 24 hour room service!

And there was a chocolate buffet at night when they had big statues of chocolate, and it was so pretty. and we had a white angel dance where everyone was dressed in white, and they had blacklights, and we danced to the 50s and 60s... and 70s.

I think it was in Chile they have this sight called the sun and the moon sight. and people used to pray over there, the Aztec Indians used to pray. and they made this kind of pyramids and temples on top of temples. there's like seven temples on the way down and they've only excavated two of them, because they sink into the ground, as they put up a new temple every 100 years. and when it was a bad harvest, they would take two young men in the village and would have them duel, and the one who won would be sacrificed, and the blood was sprinkled to make a better crop. All these traditional things they have.

In Lima I think it was when they had the llamas and the dancers. They had these huge statues facing the west. And these dancers would come, and there were dancers there with these beautiful colored costumes. They danced their religious dances. And they took stones on the mountain in the figure of a llama facing the ocean, for bringing in water and the crop.

The first tour we took the first stop we made was in Chile, and she said her name was blahblahblah but nobody could pronounce it, so she said "just call me Miss Chile, I'm Miss Chile in my dreams." She spoke perfect English. She was a graduate from the university and she studied languages. And we went into a museum where you saw this big statue that looks like a big head, like 20 or 30 feet. Like one of those Indian faces, and this boulder came from Easter Island, because it's not that far. Years ago, the Chilean government were the first people to send planes over to Easter Island, and that's why they got a thank you. Because they had a lot of those boulders on Easter Island.

Every afternoon you could have ice cream. We didn't have it every afternoon, but you could if you wanted to. I also had lobster. There were little lobster tails. If you hold your hand up, from your index finger to your wrist. They served them one night and I had three lobster tails! you could order as many as you want. Three lobster tails! Imagine that. You know what else they had, wonderful summer soups, cold soups, like rhubarb and strawberry, they were just delicious. I want to look and see if I can find a recipe for those soups.

I was in the pool, it was a salt water pool, and there was a stage and there would be singing, and the pool wasn't that deep, maybe four or five feet. so when the music came on, then we would stand in the pool and dance, we had to work off all our calories. And it was fun!

So it was just the time of our life! It was wonderful! We wouldn't change a thing. It cost a lot of money because they charged you for the drinks and they had a service fee for the tipping. So we couldn't afford to do it every year. But oh, I wish we could! It was wonderful!

If I ever become rich, I am completely paying for them to go on a yearly cruise. Because, come on. How can you not love this!?!

Wow, I am really sick this week. I started to get sick last Wednesday and Thursday, but Annie was out, so I didn't take a sick day (which in hindsight, I should have, on Thursday). I did take Friday off, and somehow managed to get through the GRE in one piece on Saturday. On Sunday is when it went horribly wrong. I think it was initially just a flu thing, but turned into something worse (mostly involving me being unable to breathe). I went to the doctor on... I think Monday. Today is my first day back to work, and thankfully I have a desk job, because standing up and walking across a room makes me cough. It is hard to concentrate on much. It's just overall gross. (And I am very glad it's spring break, so I don't have to officially cancel class tonight.)

By the way, the doctor I saw seemed really hyper and flaky. She isn't my regular doctor and she said "oh, well, I know you need a diagnosis, so... we'll just say it's bronchitis or sinusitis." Thanks, doc. I have antibiotics and am working on the fluid and rest thing, and Ian has been really good about taking care of me and picking up the slack at home. I can't do anything--I walked downstairs with a load of laundry and almost passed out. (Our washing machine is broken anyway.) Which means I am hopelessly behind at many things. I really just wish I were getting better more quickly... it's frustrating being sick for a week at a time.

Oh, I almost forgot! The GRE was fine/fun. I was expecting it to be really tragically hard; it was hard, but it felt manageable. I had plenty of time, and I felt good with what I ended up guessing. (Even if some of the guesses did turn out to be wrong, I now know.) I didn't really study much on Friday because I was so sick, but I don't think knowing more dates and stuff would have helped much. I honestly don't know how I did; I'm sure it was above 600. I don't think I made it into the 700s, but given that I was really sick, I'll cut myself some slack.

I totally could have cheated, though. They allowed you to get up and go to the bathroom; if I'd had an iPhone with me, it would have been easy. Or even an index card with some answers in my pocket. Not that cheating is right, mind you. But I was surprised how easy it would have been.

Anyway, now on to the to-do list. Don't be surprised if none of these things gets crossed off... (although while I was sick I did manage to back up my livejournal, which had been on the list for a while...)

( cough cough )

I have been having GRE anxiety dreams. At least I know who Jacques Derrida is now. That's something.

( Anything that isn't the GRE or my class can wait until Sunday... )

Hello Monique,we hope you are having a good time this weekend BIRTHDAYmom"scousin wrote a nice e-mail.She told us she found your profile on facebook also Caroline"s what is facebook .they have a big family overthere she is one of 3 sisters who are all still living in s-africa but a lot of their kids moved all over the worldaustalia and one in Philadelphia and one is making an application to go NewZealand.Willie her yougest so lives still at home 27 years old and is acomputorprogrammer /software developer, her computor crashed last year and somehow fixed it again .anyhow we wil keep intouch as I always say,FACEBOOK????? love Dad....

There is a sad dearth of practice materials and practice tests for the GRE in Literature, which I am taking April 4; I seem to have the one book that exists, the Princeton Review book.

I've been studying a little bit over the past week, and today I took the practice test. The book suggests you take it before you really start studying in earnest, because it gives you an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are.

As a starting point, I'm pretty happy: I scored a 630, in the 83st percentile. (My goal is to be in the 700s somewhere, 90+ percentile. Because that's how I roll, baby.) I guessed aggressively, and that helped me a lot; I used to tutor the SAT so I am pretty good with test-taking strategies in general.

The bad thing was that I took the test in one hour and twenty-five minutes. (I used the "multiple pass" system... go through and answer the easy ones first, then go back and do the harder ones.) It's supposed to take two hours and fifty minutes. So, um, too fast! And I can see that I made a couple of careless errors as a result.

I need to go through the answers and see where the gaps are in my knowledge. Off the top of my head, it would have helped me to know anything at all about Tom Jones or John Dos Passos or Daniel Deronda or, um, Shelley (sorry, I know I have a poetry degree, please don't come take it away from me). Just for the sake of process of elimination.

Anyway, the Lit GRE is fun times. I really wish there were more practice tests... I'd be taking them all the time!

We got a hard drive full of wedding pictures from Nonk this weekend, and Ian found a disk full of pictures from Wendy that he had filed away somewhere, so I've been uploading some of the approximately one thousand wedding pictures to Flickr! I realize we got married a year and a half ago, but better late than never, right? Wendy and Nonk are both so talented... the pictures are fantastic.

In other news, I have things to do this week. Like I do every week. I didn't really get much done this weekend; I had a list, but basically I watched a lot of movies (Ghost World and Cold Comfort Farm) and television ("ER" and "Amazing Race" and "Top Model") and went to a party and spent most of Sunday recovering from the party. I did manage to get a few errands and some schoolwork done, but I didn't make it to the gym or to the grocery store, nor did I do the laundry. Oh well. I had such a great time at the party (Annie's birthday) so it was worth it.

( Here are the things I need to do. )

I worked all this weekend but I also managed to run some errands and hit the gym and get back to something resembling a routine. One thing I did not do? Any grading whatsoever. So that's at the top of my to-do list for the week. I have three days. I think I can do it!

I feel bad just dumping my to-do list on you without anything exciting to add. But my weekend was not very exciting unless you count work as exciting. Which it kind of is not. Or the fact that Beyonce is now on my workout playlist. Which kind of is! How are you guys doing? Anything exciting?

I give up.

( Here it goes again (yeah here it goes! here it goes!) )

I'm working this weekend, which sucks, but it could be worse. If I only worked five hours, I wouldn't get any overtime at all. But I worked a bunch yesterday and am working again today, so I'm getting some overtime. Since I'm trying to build back up my savings account, and since I am working from home in my PJs, and since "work" currently consists of "waiting for them to send me things," and since Ian made me some fancy Blue Bottle coffee this morning and even went out to buy me some milk to put in it, I really can't complain. But still, I'm stuck here in front of the computer until the work is done. So here I am.

I just updated my book blog (since my web host finally got their shit together and fixed my FTP problem) and my reading list. Here are the books I read in the first two months of the year:

1. Cruddy, by Lynda Barry
2. The Lady Elizabeth, by Allison Weir
3. Georgiana, Duchess of Denvonshire, by Amanda Foreman
4. Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
5. Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
6. Houston, We Have a Problema, by Gwendolyn Zepeda
7. How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier
8. Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella
9. The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith

Notice anything? They're all by women! This kind of makes me want to see how long I can keep the streak going, for absolutely no reason other than random coolness. Although I am reading Infinite Jest. But hey, it's long. I can squeeze in a few more books by women before I'm done. Maybe I'll read Ripley and some of the books on the Time booklist. I'm going to go to the bookstore and check out The Man Who Loved Children, The Blind Assassin, Under the Net, The Death of the Heart, and Play It As It Lays, all possibilities from the booklist.

As soon as I can leave the house, that is...

So my friend Brian started a blog about his hobby of collecting random stuff, such as dinosaur skulls and cool Roman artifacts and old-timey bugs and a butter churn. Not only does he collect and write about all this weird crap, he does it in a clever way. Seriously, it's a fun read.

But here's the thing: I linked it on Twitter and some people followed the link. (If you already saw this on Twitter, I apologize.) Then our friend Steve linked it on Facebook and Brian's blog got more hits. More hits! 74, to be exact. And then Brian is all, "He's clearly more internet famous than you," and I'm all, "oh no you di'int!" 74 hits? 74? BITCH, PLEASE.

So I'm asking you to go visit Brian's blog and help me beat Steve in this completely pointless internet pissing contest. Not all of you even have to do it; just 75 of you would be great. And if someone leaves a comment, that would be even better! TAKE THAT, STEVE.

(Also, geowench, you might like this entry especially.)

(P.S. I don't actually think I am "internet famous," by the way. It's just Friday and I'm punchy and on cold medicine.)

Beyond all the Twittering and Facebooking and Flickring, I doubt I'll write anything extensive here about the wedding and Vegas and Rob's visit and all of that. I may manage to do it, but I'm feeling a little felled by flu-like symptoms and I don't know if I could Capture the Magic anyway. It's been hectic but really, really amazingly fun. And I have the best friends ever, bar none, on earth. I am a lucky person.

( Ain't no party like a to do list party... )