At the end of the day, I personally think these are absolutely a nightmare.

My mother found this list of the top ten most irritating phrases yesterday. We got quite a kick out of it.

1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

My favorite thing about this list is that one of our local radio personalities--who, by the way, drives me crazy-- uses all of these. Not only does he use them, but he uses them in grammatically and idiomatically incorrect ways. In his honor, I'd like to nominate a few additional annoying phrases:

11. The point being (is)...
12. What that amounts to (is)...
13. I don't know about you, but...
14. I'm just sayin'
15. literally (when something is most emphatically not literal)

Any more nominations for most irritating phrases?

Patrick and I got up "early" (7:30) this morning to go work out at the Y. Generally, the atmosphere is fairly upbeat, and they pump in happy, slightly lame, adult-contemporary music of the "80s, 90s, and Today!" variety. Bearable, fairly quiet, and safe for the whole family.

Well, this morning their radio was possessed by demons. Instead of the usual Coldplay and Sheryl Crow, we were treated to a whole morning of 50 Cent, Akon, and various other purveyors of raunchy rap. Fortunately, the volume was low enough that the majority of the songs were drowned out by the whirring of treadmills and clanking of weights, but enough made it through to make the old man across from me look like he was going to have an attack of some sort.

The highlight of the morning however, by far, was the political commentary to which we were treated between every "song." (Yes, I am calling the musicality of the genre into question. But that's for another time.) The DJs on this particular station let loose the usual digs, suggested that "Those dirty Republicans want to make it so that only gun-toting oil barons feel safe going to the polls" and uttered a few unrepeatable slams on Sarah Palin. Apparently Akon will leave the country if Obama is not elected. Darn. My very favorite comment of the morning, however, was this little gem: "If McCain gets elected, gas prices will be so high, it will be cheaper to take a cab everywhere."

Just let it sink in. Enjoy the feel of deep, considered, intelligent political commentary. Ahhhhhh.

Music, anyone?

I have received a command from my mother. She insists that I blog. Being a dutiful and submissive daughter, I obey with alacrity.

While driving to and from "real" school (I say with a smirk), I have been attempting to educate my ears. I've been taking advantage of our library's music collection, checking out a few different CDs every week, and listening to them in my car where they won't bother anyone else. I've discovered a few good ones so far, and rediscovered some old favorites. (Even done in overblown, bombastic American symphony orchestra style, Brahms Requiem is one of the most amazing pieces of music ever written.)

My mother bought one of the opera CDs I found a while back and I've listened to it enough that I can (1) recognize the pieces and (2) have favorites.

So, sitting on the couch tonight, watching TV, the music of one of the commercials caught my ear. It was a stupid Red Bull commercial, involving a cat preening itself while sitting in an arm chair. Peppy classical music plays.....and the "camera" pans up to an empty bird cage. I started cracking up, confusing my mother. It was a stupid commercial. But the music flitting along was Mozart's "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja", which is sung by a bird-catcher in "The Magic Flute." I was so tickled I had to rewind and rewatch the commercial.

I realize that hardly anyone watching that commercial (let alone paying attention) would "get it", and that the fact that I did and got so excited probably confirms once again that I am a geek, but I loved seeing that someone put some actual effort into choosing the music.

Today is my birthday. I am officially 22 years old.

My last several birthdays have been accompanied by major festivities (dinner for 20-30 at Buca di Beppo) and much excitement. For some reason, I haven't had any of that excitement this year. I didn't want a big party, so we did take-out chinese food and movies at home with just the 6 of us. I haven't been able to make gift suggestions when people (Grandma ;o)) ask for them. I didn't even remember that my birthday was coming until Facebook told me. Facebook.

Not that I haven't had a great day. Church was wonderful, as always. My mother, Patrick, and I went on the West Central Neighborhood home and garden tour. It was the perfect day to walk around outside and any day is a good day to look at old houses. Our dinner was delicious and easy to clean up and there is a cheesecake waiting in the fridge.

Only 258 days left!

It's only Wednesday of the first week of classes and I am already battling some major, unexpected, intense senioritis. It's not that I don't like my classes this semester. In fact, I've been looking forward to them for months. With the exception of the reading and research I'll be doing for my senior seminar, my workload really shouldn't be that bad.

I just want it all to be over with.

So yes, I took time out of studying to figure out exactly how many days are left until graduation. I'll be counting down, starting now.

I'm hanging out at my grandparents' house in Anderson for a few days before heading to Salt Lake City with my mother. We're going to the Melaleuca convention, which I'm pretty excited about. Glenn Beck is the main speaker, which should be entertaining.

I've taken to listening to opera in the last few days (as though I wasn't already weird enough.) I picked up several CDs from the library, one of which proclaimed itself the "Best Opera Album in the World... Ever." While I don't know how valid that claim is, I've certainly been enjoying the music. Also attracted by the title, I checked out the "Opera Babes," which I found enjoyable, if slightly dippy. Just to balance things out, I also grabbed some Killers, Corrs, and Vivaldi.

I'm still completely glued to the Olympics and have come to the realization that I have no life. I've thought before that this might be the case, but my obsessive TV viewing this week has pretty much confirmed it.

Jason Lezak is my HERO

Oh yeah.

Take that, snobby French relay-team!

If this doesn't motivate the Belarusian Olympians, I don't know what will.

Of course, the British have a deal of their own. I think I'd like to be British....and an Olympic-caliber athlete.

Ahhh, The Games

I'm sitting here, watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics when I should be in bed, but I can't tear myself away. I know that it will just be more of the same-- groups of people wearing marginally interesting costumes with commentary by the everlastingly annoying Bob Costas. (Come on, dude. The Americans were not wearing berets. Those were jaunty little flat caps.)

I have been a big fan of the Olympics for as long as I can remember. And not just a big fan... a slightly obsessive big fan. When I was ten I named one of my Barbies "Lisa Schwong" after Li Xiaoshuang, all-around men's gymnastics gold medalist in the 1996 Olympics. During the 2000 games in Sydney, I kept track of every medal won by every country, noted times for races and scores for gymnasts. I clipped newspaper stories about my favorite athletes (which I still have in a box under my bed.) I could never decide who I adored more:"The Thorpedo" Ian Thorpe or Pieter van den Hoogenband.

In 2004 I watched the Olympics almost every waking hour (ahhh, the advantages of being jobless and homeschooled.) I had the schedule almost memorized and I refused to miss certain events.

I intend to savor every moment of the games this year, although my life may get in the way of those plans. I can't exactly justify skipping work for watch TV, whatever the program.

Just what I always wanted!

My brothers are off gallivanting again. This time they are on vacation in Michigan with our grandparents and cousins Kate and Matt. My father was also in Michigan yesterday on business, leaving us girls to our own devices.

Before bed, my mother helped me put in pin curls. I wanted curly hair so badly when I was little-- we tried hot rollers, foam rollers, braids, and pin curls. Somehow, within minutes my hair would always be flat and painfully straight. At some point, I gave up and stopped trying to make my hair curl, but last night I thought that it was worth another try. My mother gooped my hair up and started pinning. I wrapped my head in a scarf to sleep, wishing oh-so-badly that I had an honest to goodness night cap (with blue ribbons....and a matching night gown.....)

When I took out the curlers this morning, my hair was enormous. It would have been fun to leave it like that, but since I had to work, I figured it might be wise to tame it a little and stuck it back in a clip.

Somehow, miraculously and unexpectedly, the curls stayed all day. When I got off work, it was still curly. After going shopping and trying on several shirts--still curly. After brushing it and putting in a pony tail tonight-- still curly. So what if as soon as it gets wet I'll be stuck with stick straight hair again? Now I know that something works.

Putting in the curlers last night got me started on one of my favorite hair-rants: '40s hair. I want to be able to wear '40s hair styles. As far as I can tell, the styles were universally flattering and incredibly feminine. Will someone please bring those back?

Kitty Issues

My poor girl cat has been acting strangely for the last few days. Sure, she's been sneezing and vomiting, but that's really not all that odd. Things happen, right? The odd part is that she has been very, VERY social and friendly. When I sit down, within minutes she is either in my lap or curled up against me purring. When she goes outside, she stays in the yard and either sleeps or calls for me to join her.

You would have to know my cat to realize just how strange this behavior is. Callie has a definite independent streak and has never been super friendly. In the last few years she has often been downright hostile to almost everyone (though she always finds one person in the family to be nice to.) You don't pet her unless she specifically demands it. To do so is to risk life and limb.

I took her to the vet yesterday, which naturally made her extremely happy. As though the cat carrier and the car ride weren't enough, the vet had the audacity to draw blood from Callie (wait, isn't it supposed to be the other way around?) and do other intrusive and uncomfortable things to her. On the way home, Callie yelled incessantly. The vet didn't know what was wrong with her, but she did some blood tests for "old cat ailments" and said she would call me with the results. I got a message on my phone while I was at work, asking if I would please call them back to "discuss" the results of the tests. I'm not sure what discussion entails, or whether the need for discussion implies. Call me heartless, but if my cat has some serious health problem, I am not going to go broke treating her. She is an animal, after all-- an animal that would probably finish me off and eat me if I were seriously ill.

Feelin' Domesticated

How weird is this? This will be the second cooking/baking post in a row, from a girl who doesn't do much of either.

The plentiful harvest continues. We have oversized zucchini coming out of our ears, necessitating yummy baked goods. This afternoon I made two lovely loaves of zucchini bread--one with raisins added for my mother and one with mini-chocolate chips for myself. Vegetables mixed with obscene amounts of sugar and chocolate...brilliant!

My mother and I cooked a semi-gourmet dinner (her half was fairly gourmet-mine was more "novice gourmet"). She made her first foray into the risky culinary world of risottos. The result was an incredibly rich four-cheese concoction. My contribution was a platter of thin, crispy, zucchini fritters (courtesy of the Pioneer Woman blog.) My mother has photographic proof of this over on her blog.

The very best part of all of this was that I got to wear my beautiful french apron, which just happened to coordinate perfectly with my clothing. Hey, cool.

Baking 101: Not all dry ingredients are "dry ingredients"

I mixed up some zucchini-cookie dough yesterday (delicious recipe posted on my mother's blog) and I discovered just how little I actually know about baking. I thought I was pretty good. I can make chocolate chip cookies in my sleep and have even been daring enough to play with the consistency of the dough. My cookies have always turned out well.

Unfortunately, the zucchini cookie recipe had NO instructions; there was only a list of ingredients and an oven temperature. I asked my mother what to do, and she told me to sift together the dry ingredients. So I added the flour and sugar.... Apparently, sugar isn't dry. Sugar is wet, like butter and eggs (I don't understand it. Who makes up these rules?) My mother caught my mistake, but only after I had mixed 4 cups of sugar and a cup of flour. Upon figuring out that I had just messed up and potentially wasted a ton of sugar, I did the only reasonable thing: I burst into tears.

After bagging the disastrous sugar-flour mixture (apparently there is a use for it) I started again, this time asking my mother and grandmother about each step.

I ran out of time to bake the cookies yesterday, so the dough was set aside in the fridge until this evening. The actual baking part of the process was much more successful. No silly mistakes. No tears. Just dozens and dozens of really really yummy cookies.

Way to waste time

Tagged by my mother:


What was I doing ten years ago?

Ten years ago, our family had just moved from the Chicago suburbs (for the first time) to Columbus, Indiana. I was attending summer camp at Phantom Ranch in Wisconsin, where the activities included canoing, swimming, horsemanship, leather-work, hiking, rifle range, archery, and altar calls. I injured my knee racing my counselor to chapel after nailing lists of our sins on a cross (fun times) and I still have a nasty scar.

What are 5 things on my to-do list for tomorrow?

1) go to work and make money
2) help straighten the house
3) neaten my room
4) hang out with our visiting relatives
5) work on Latin


Snacks I enjoy:

cheese and crackers, pretzels and cream cheese, Goldfish, fruit

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I'm just going to copy and paste my mother's list, because mine is pretty much identical....
"Buy a condo on the beach in Florida and open it up to our friends and family
Buy a big lake house and open it up to our friends and family
Build a house in the country with a wonderful gourmet kitchen and room for everyone to come over
Rehab houses and sell them with no interest loans
Give lots to charity"
I would also put my brothers and cousins through whatever college they choose, buy a horse or two to go with that country place, and take an unstructured extended trip overseas


Places I have lived:
West Lafayette, Anderson, Columbus, and Fort Wayne, IN; New Berlin, WI; Vernon Hills, Island Lake, and Spring Grove, IL

Jobs I have had:
house-cleaner (for my grandparents)
babysitter
Library Page/Shelver

Four people who I would like to know more about:

Rachel
Katie
Emily
Goofy Brother #2

Man, do I love technology

First, if you aren't already listening to the resurrected Issues Etc., you should be. Here it is. Go for it.

Second, I normally love listening to Glenn Beck, but I haven't had a chance to catch his program for a few weeks. Classes and my job saw to that. I signed up for the free e-newsletter to make up for it, and today I received this transcript. Scary, but oh-so-funny.

A political message I can get behind

McCain? Obama? __Insert Candidate of Your Choice__?

I'd really love one of these T-shirts.

I had no idea that reading a 67 page legal document could be so much fun. Better than Dostoevsky? Maybe not. More amusing? In this case, definitely. I had no idea that Justice Scalia was so sassy.

I have to admit, my little strict constructionist heart skipped a few beats when I read this gem:

"A constitutional guarantee subject to future

judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional

guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with

the scope they were understood to have when the people

adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes)

even future judges think that scope too broad."

554 U. S. 63 (2008)

What was I thinking?

At the moment, I have a rather large stack of books waiting to be read. I did some browsing at the library last week and picked out a few books that caught my eye. The first one is "London Rising" by Leo Hollis, which is about the impact of men like John Locke and Sir Christopher Wren on modern London. (Well, I think it looks interesting.....) I also grabbed a set of essays on the Gilded Age. I don't feel the need to plow through it like a novel, but some of the sections looked really interesting. My mother also just purchased "Albion's Seed", a book that I have been wanting to read for a few years, but have been too intimidated to try...1000+ pages of Anglo-American cultural history. Nothing like some nice light reading for those summer months, eh?

No, nothing like light reading. The first book on my list, and the one I am working on right now, is "Crime and Punishment." I don't know if "enjoyment" is the correct word for my experience so far, but it is nowhere near as painful as I had been led to believe. I figured that since I loved "The Brothers Karamazov" I might as well try this also.

After finishing these books, I will have temporarily lost the ability to read all but the fluffiest of fluffy chick-lit and will be reduced to sitting out in the sun shine giving my poor overtaxed mind a vacation. Another less impressive pile of library books will replace the current very ambitious pile and I will begin saving up mental energy for another intellectual binge.

Come on, People!

I did something for the first time today. Something I have been tempted to do many times but never actually gotten the guts to do.

I walked out of a class.

Granted, it was during a break in the middle of class, not while the professor was talking, but there was no way I could stand to sit in that class and listen for another hour.

Today's class was on "population ecology" which apparently translates to "population growth." The professor showed graph after graph of population statistics, all of them semi-apocalyptic and predicting the end of the world if people have the nerve to keep reproducing. This was annoying, to say the least. The professor insisted that, at a birthrate of 1 child per couple (let alone the replacement rate of 2.0), the population will continue to grow out of control because, "the old people aren't dying." Now, is it just me, or does the very phrase "replacement rate" imply that the population is merely being replaced? Not increased? Oh, and how about the fact that EVERYONE dies?

As my professor says, "Reality doesn't have to apply exactly directly." Come on. What do you think this is? Science?

That wasn't what made me walk out, though. After learning about explosive, uncontrollable, exponential population growth, he turned to population control. After showing vital stats for a few different countries, he started talking about the necessity of the birth rate falling to match the death rate or the death rate rising to meet the birth rate. Our choice (as explained by Mr. Science) is either that reproduction be stringently controlled or more people die (but he didn't let us in on the secret of HOW this is to be accomplished.) He then proceeded to tell us that it is much better that more humans never be born because otherwise they will have to suffer. When asked to clarify his position--if he was really saying babies should never be born--he sort of smiled, mumbled a little and said, "Yes, that's right."

After we were given a break (and grabbed our backpacks and ran away) I was able to watch my seminarian/philosopher friends go off on the idiocy we had just been subjected to.

Coincidentally, Laura Ingrahm on FoxNews talked about this very issue this evening. She had a proponent of "population stabilization" on to discuss it. He was also unable to explain exactly how this should be brought about. The main problem in, in his mind, seemed to be the growth in the American population. He used it as an example of overpopulation everywhere, which made some sense until he pointed to immigration as the driving factor behind US growth. Now hang on, but can growth via immigration really be factored into global population growth? Did those immigrants not exist before they crossed the border?

You Bet I Like Nature

I have a theory-- it seems that the disgustingness of an insect or spider is directly proportional to the beauty of the flower near which it is living. I noticed this again this evening while tending our roses. Every time I found myself admiring one of our plants, I would also find myself suddenly disgusted by some creepy-crawly that had made itself at home on said plant.

(And no, the dude in the picture there was not in the garden tonight. He is either long dead or still stranded on a very large island on the other side of the world where he passes his time eating large bugs and small children.)