I always knew I was royal....

Thank you, Katie.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Countess Bethany the Herbaceous of Leg over Wallop Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

I'm posting right now because I'm tired of seeing the same thing every time I open my blog. That, and I haven't posted anything for almost a month.

Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to write anything that makes any sense, so I'll just save that for later, when I'm procrastinating about studying for my German exam.

Pancakes for Dummies

After I got off of work this afternoon, my mother and Patrick took me out for lunch at IHOP. I had been hungry for pancakes for a few days, so I was ridiculously excited by the prospect.

I got a lovely plate of yummy, fluffy, whole wheat pancakes, which I covered in butter. I decided to use syrup, something that I never do. As I was pouring the syrup, I was amazed by how thin it seemed. It splashed all over my plate and soaked right in. As I was eating my pancakes, I was surprised at the lack of sweetness- I had just drenched my pancakes in syrup. I was setting down the jug, thinking, "I like this syrup. I don't like overly-sweet syrup...." when my mother asked me to pass the coffee. I looked around for the coffee, and she pointed it out to me... right in my hand. I tried to explain to her that that was the syrup, but as she was pouring it into her cup, I realized that, yes, it looked much more like coffee than syrup.

We spent several minutes laughing at me.

There are two lessons to be learned from this. The first is that one should always read the labels before one dumps something all over one's food. The second is that coffee tastes pretty good on pancakes.

Up too late, with access to a computer

It turns out that I'm a lazier blogger than even I knew. I have had weeks off of school and haven't managed to write one stinkin' thing in all that time.

On a side note, the break has been wonderful. I enjoyed all our Christmas celebrations, although I have come to the conclusion that I am officially a disenchanted twenty-something type. I discovered this when, upon waking on Christmas morning, my first thought was not, "Ooooh! Presents!" or "Yay! We get to attend another beautiful church service." No, my first thought was more like, "Mmmphrrrrm. Still sleeping."

I worked every morning this last week. The library is finally moving to its amazing new home, and the process started in the Genealogy department on the day after Christmas. I spent 4 hours every morning shifting books from the original set of friendly, smooth, stable shelves to the vicious, nasty, cruel, unsanded-plywood moving shelves. For some reason, no one else seems to have had much of an issue with these beasts. I, however, don't seem to be able to approach them without my hands being savaged.
It could be worse. I am being paid for my trouble, after all.

In honor of the New Year, Patrick and I are watching our favorite Tivo-ed episodes from the past year. I discovered in the course of the evening that Patrick had missed the series finale of Alias last Spring, so we're in the middle of it right now. Jack is dying, Irina deserves to die, and Sark is awesome in his $500 shoes. That was one great show.

Long Day

I'll get the semi-depressing part out of the way first. It would appear that my Spring Break trip to Germany has been cancelled. I got a $250 refund check from the IPFW Continuing Studies dept. (the dept. that works with the travel programs) in the mail today with a note attached saying,"Full Refunds are given if the university cancels a program." Sniffle. Really, though, it is almost a relief. Funds were going to be very tight and I was a little stressed over the cost. Now that I won't be spending every penny I have, I feel quite well off. ;o) My mother is even talking about a family trip to Siesta Key for Spring Break.....That could definitely make up for any suffering.

Andrew and I started this morning much earlier than we would have wished. He and I had to be over at church for Christmas program practice (he's a Wise Guy and I'm the accompanist.) I like to moan and complain to my mother about taking part, but really I enjoy playing for it, even on the dreadful piano in the church basement.

After practice was over and I had wrapped some gifts, we headed down to Anderson for an (early) Christmas get-together with family. My grandparents, and maybe some aunts and uncles, are going to be gone for Christmas, so we had to celebrate a little early.
We got to my grandparent's house a few hours before the festivities were supposed to commence, so my mother and I helped out a little in the kitchen. I got to assist my grandpa in making the beef brisket for dinner... a VERY important job.

Back at Thanksgiving, all the cousins exchanged names to decide who was buying gifts for whom, and so "us kids" had our exchange this evening. Since I'm technically an adult I also got to take part in the adult's gift exchange (the sort where you can steal presents and everyone gets really wild.) I contributed a set of Starbucks demitasse cups and saucers which I fell in love with yesterday (nothing like waiting until the last minute.) My mother scooped them up and was able to hang on to them all evening. I got a gigantic, soft, fluffy, warm fleece blanket which is my new best friend. In fact, we're hanging out together right now.

Speaking of soft and warm, my grandparents got me a cashmere sweater which I am completely in love with. It's a pretty sort of sea-blue and oh-so-soft.

Tomorrow, after church and the Christmas Program, we have the Bach Collegium-sponsored Messiah sing-along, which should be fun.

Finals are OVER!

I am sitting in the library computer lab right now, heaving many sighs of relief. I just finshed my piano final, and before that completed my psychology final.

The piano one went fairly well. I flubbed my way through Mozart's Rondo alla Turca, but they judges decided not to hold my memory problems against me because, "it was a gutsy move to even try to play that piece." (I didn't know I was being gutsy. I just liked the music.) My other two pieces went off beautifully, and I got very high marks. Now I can go back to playing the piano for fun, and maybe even pull out some Christmas music sometime soon.

I now have a month of freedom before me.... a month to get excited about next semester and, most of all, a month to spend NOT thinking about when my next paper is due. Yesssssss.

Now I just have to wait for all of my grades to come back. ;o)

Saturday Photo Hunt

Today's theme is Red.

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I just love taking pictures of the flowers at Foster Park, especially the tulips. They have so many "good sides" to get pictures of, and the colors are just fantastic! For some reason, this one always makes me think of a dragon.



I love this picture, which I took while staying in Australia. That's my aunt in the red coat, and my uncle is father up along the path in his red shirt. We were on our way to see some Aboriginal cave paintings (which, incidently, were also red.)

Last day of class!

I just thought that I would share some of my glee. This afternoon I had my last class for the semester. I still have to make it through a few days of finals next week, but actual classes are over. I think that when finals are over I'll throw myself a party.

On Monday I'm getting together with some friends from my honors 20th Century class for some pre-final studying time. We got together before the midterm and it was incredibly helpful. Our professor tends to talk very quickly, and it can be difficult to write down all the necessary points, so meeting to compare and compile notes helps to create a much more cohesive picture. We'll be meeting at a classmate's house and there will be food and coffee, plus a fire in the fireplace. Cozy.

Oooooh! Blog Update!

I just realized that my blog has been sitting there, gathering dust-bunnies since Thanksgiving. The poor thing. I'm sure it has been feeling incredibly neglected, but I do have a good excuse for my desertion. My perfect excuse is that I have had many long, disgusting, boring, school-related papers to write. When I have long, disgusting, boring, school-related papers to write, I find myself completely unable to even contemplate writing for fun.

Perhaps after finals are over next week I'll post more. In fact, I'll make myself post more.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm sitting in my grandparents' living room right now, having chopped **9** cups of celery in preparation for the best stuffing in the entire world. My grandmother's stuffing is legendary.... People start dreaming about it on the day after Thanksgiving and crave it all year. It makes chopping cups and cups of briny water chestnuts bearable.

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Theme today- Plush

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This is my little brother, cuddling with his bears Toby Keith and Firebreath. (Yes, those are the names he gave them.)

I changed my mind

I do have the brain power to write something.

I spent the entire day today in my pajamas. I didn't have school, work, or anything responsible to do, so I vegged. In this case, vegging meant entering 336 books into my Library Thing account (that would be Rachel's fault.) It was nice to just relax and waste an entire day. I've been so very useful lately, and it was starting to catch up with me. ;o)

I'm getting ready to start on my final paper for the semester. It's for my 20th Century class, and I'm writing it on government-sponsored eugenics and social engineering. As I'm sure you can guess, it's going to be a very uplifting paper...almost as uplifting as the one I wrote last year on physician-assisted suicide. I honestly don't know what makes me choose such dreadful topics. Maybe I should have a talk with my psychology professor.....

My history class has been really interesting lately, mostly because our discussions keep going off topic, so that when we're supposed to be discussing communist China, we're actually having a philosophical discussion on human rights, which morphs into isolationism v. internationalism, which somehow turns into a discussion of why we hate Wal-Mart (and not for the usual PC reasons.) Somehow, with all of that going on, we still manage to learn about Communist China. And, on one in the class, including the professor, tries to argue in favor of Communism or Socialism

Of course, there are some of the usual flakey people involved in the discussions...the sort who try to tell the class that everyone in America hates the US military, and that all good Americans should move to Australia. Apparently Canada is no longer an option... something about Canadians being too American.

My American history class is quite different. For the two weeks we've had the pleasure of hearing the professor rhapsodize over Johnson's Great Society and whine about the evil Vietnam veterans and all the problems they caused for us. We're talking about Nixon on Tuesday, which should be... interesting.

Because my mother wants me to post...

...and I'm lacking the brain power to actually write something:

In One Word-

1. Yourself: hungry
2. Your spouse: hah!
3. Your hair: up
4. Your mother: dancing
5. Your father: bald (good thing he doesn't read this...)
6. Your favorite item: books!
7. Your dream last night: weird
8. Your favorite drink: water
9. Your dream car: convertible
10. The room you are in: bedroom
11. Your ex: hah!
12. Your fear: failure
13. What you want to be in 10 years? rich.....
14. Who you hung out with last night? my mother
15. What you’re not? energetic
16. Muffins: poppyseed
17. One of your wish list items: horse
18. Time: flying
19. The last thing you did: LibraryThing
20. What you are wearing: pjs
21. Your favorite weather: sunny
22. Your favorite book: Pride and Prejudice (so I can't answer that one in one word...)
23. The last thing you ate: cereal
24. Your life: busy
25. Your mood: cranky
26. Your best friend: my mother (aww)
27. What are you thinking about right now? dinner
28. Your car: hah!
29. What are you doing at the moment? breathing
30. Your summer: short
31. Your relationship status: fine
32. What is on your TV? : movie
33. What is the weather like? cold
34. When is the last time you laughed? just now

New Blog

One of my very favorite people now has a blog, and I am CERTAIN that it will be very interesting when he gets around to posting on it.

Patrick's Gallimaufry is the blog, and if you couldn't guess, it is my weird and wonderful little brother.

This is what your taxes pay for

I am now officially a government employee.

Please, no one disown me.

I started today at my job as a shelver in the genealogy department of our library. I'll be working 10 hours a week, and after my first 5 hour shift, I'm exhausted. My legs and arms are sooo very tired, but they feel good. A few weeks doing this and I'll be in good shape!

So, I may also be the slowest shelver in the history of libraries, taking care of about 175 books in 4 hours. The aim is 100 books an hour. I'll get there...someday...maybe... ;o)

My coworkers seem very friendly and gave me lots of advice and help today.

Oh, and I have a locker. I've never had a locker before....

If you can't tell, I'm tired AND excited, which leads to semi-incoherent writing. Good thing I don't have any papers to write tonight.

When books collide...

This evening, as we were sitting in the family room relaxing, my mother discovered an interesting connection between one of our favorite books and our favorite author.

The book is Katherine, by Anya Seton. It is about Katherine Swynford, the third wife of John of Gaunt and 5th great-grandmother of Henry VIII. One of the lovely things about our copy of this book is that there is a beautiful family tree inside the front cover, showing John's family (Edward III, his brother Richard II, etc) andalso Katherine's.

While perusing this family tree, my mother noticed that Lionel of Antwerp, brother of John and Richard, married an Elizabeth de Burgh. Lemme think. Where have I seen that name before? Hmm.... A little down the line, Katherine's son Thomas, by her first husband (Hugh) married a Miss Margaret Darcy.

And, hey! Katherine's daughter Joan Beaufort married a Sir Robert Ferrers.

As though I didn't have a hard enough time telling my real historical characters from my fictional ones, now Jane Austen names are popping up in real, historical families. :o)

Photo Hunt- Dreaming

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I'm posting this is conjunction with my mother's post on the same topic. We both dream of being on the beach on Siesta Key, my favorite place in the entire world. This is a picture of my brothers and me from the last time our family was down there, and as you can tell from the date on the photo, it has been entirely too long!

Planning....

The semester is about half-way over, and 2007 schedules are floating around. This is always the most exciting part of the semester for me, but also the hardest- I just want my current classes to be over with!
Over the weekend I sat down with my schedule book and my mother (both indispensible) and figured out which classes I want to take in the spring. I'll be taking second semester-second year German for sure, Weather and Climate (clouds! storms!), a lovely "Western World Masterpieces" lit. class, Ottoman history, and 20th century British poetry. And THEN....the best part of all.... GER320 "Berlin and Beyond," involving a 10-day trip through Germany over Spring Break! I'm so excited!

I've almost decided to try for an English minor, and depending on how the classes fall, a double History/English major. The classes just look sooooo yummy. I'm just crushed that the Elizabethan Poetry class conflicts with the classes I need next semester....But maybe next year.

Or maybe I'll just stay in school for a really long time.....

Photo Hunt

Today's theme: Sleeping

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Another picture of my killer Callie-Cat. This time, she has shoved all my music boxes out of the way, and is sleeping on a shelf....safe from the other cat. (Incidently, she had just come out of the rain and was soaking wet. Just what I wanted. ;o) )

Next Week's theme is "Lost."

Next week:

As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I am not a "math person." I don't enjoy math, which I find boring and, in many cases, irrelevant to my life. As such, I was not looking forward to taking a math class this semester, even one as nonthreatening-sounding as "Math for the Liberal Arts Student."

To my very great surprise, I have been getting perfect grades in this class. In fact, I've been getting perfect grades without even needing to study all that much. This has been freaking me out more than a little bit.

Today, at the end of class, the professor suggested that the class share phone numbers, so that we can call each other to conferr on our homework assignments. She finshed by saying, "...and this does NOT mean that you can all take down Bethany's number and call her to find out the correct answers...."

:cue Twilight Zone music:

I am the smarty-pants in math class? Did someone swap my brain? Has my psychology professor been doing covert experiments on me? Anyway, it is WEIRD.