Comfort blanket

Painful defeats seem to sap my energy. I've spent the last couple of hours cuddling with my down-filled satin-lined blanket and laptop. I watched another episode of Heroes- which I've decided is mediocre, but I don't have anything better to watch. Also, I drooled over this jacket, on sale at oldnavy.com right now-


I adore it, which means I'll probably end up buying it, after the requisite amount of time has passed so that I know I actually love it. Same process as trying it on in a store, leaving to eat lunch, and coming back to buy it, except more cozy and with shipping costs.

Tonight I also discovered a recording of the band's halftime show on NBC.com, much to my excitement. Our student section seats are in the corner of the field, so it's hard to tell what the band formations are from such a diagonal angle. Today they played OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" made famous by youtube (go watch the video if you haven't seen it, it's amazing). The band formed stick figures running on treadmills! How cool is that? Then they played Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting", created Chinese characters and spelled out Kung Fu. They also broke wooden boards :-). I love our band so so much. They are pretty much the most amazing thing ever. No offense to Georgia Tech's band ;-)

I meant to do homework tonight. Then I was lazy. Oops.

As a side note, the whole begging for comments paragraph recently was meant to be in jest. My ego is not suffering for lack of comment love. Heaven knows how much I suck at commenting on blogs, even though I faithfully read them. Don't worry, my biological and non-biological mothers who read this, all is well. Silly gooses.

Athens, here I come

Now that I've moved from indecision to passion about the whole study abroad thing, there are SO MANY hurdles to jump through. I have asked for (and received) two professor recommendations, approval from the Arts and Letters department and the Political Science department, and a rector recommendation. All I have left in that regard is a peace studies appointment next week so I can log their approval too. This is all in addition to my application, which is sorta done but needs to be tweaked. My essay needs a lot of work. After so much effort, I had better get accepted, because now I'm excited. Darn it. I really want to go.

Good grief, I have so much writing to get done this weekend. Let's count:

1. Study abroad app essay
2. Grant proposal draft for funding so I can go to Germany, etc next semester
3. I need to FINALLY finish my Guatemala paper. The problem with thorough outlines is I entirely lose patience when it comes to writing the paper. Ick.
4. Outline of Veritatis Splendor (the encyclical)
   
5. Take home essay test for my nonviolence class

That was depressing. Um, yay for weekends...

Methinks earthworms have more interesting lives

Quote of the night: "You're so evil." (Joey)

This was in response to my convoluted plot to bypass college, which involved suing his chemistry book publishers for gender discrimination and making millions, thus making it irrelevant whether I passed chemistry or not.

Yeah. It's a slow night. I'm studying for a Spanish test on the subjunctive case, which, trust me, is wildly entertaining.

However, I did get paid for my research job today, in the form of a personal check from the professor in question. Sketchy much? At least I don't have to pay taxes now. Another piece of good news- the presentation for my hugelyginormous semester-long group project on the peace process in Guatemala was today, and it went well. Best moment:
Professor- "Who was the UN negotiator?"
Me, quickly- "Jean Arnault."
Professor- "That was intended to be a tricky question."
I like being a goody two shoes. By the way, can someone please explain the etymology of that phrase? I have no idea what it means. Thanks.

Joey just performed the N'Sync "Bye Bye Bye" dance. I think we spend too much time studying.

House

Since the demise of Star Trek, House is the only TV show I will watch live every week. I get way too fed up with commercials with other shows, and I just catch them later online. But I can't imagine postponing watching a new episode of House. I must see it as soon as possible! Which means watching it on TV like everyone else.

But this show is worth it. Witty banter, ethical dilemmas for Joey and I to debate later, even the occasional CIA intervention or love triangle. Oh yeah, and awesome abnormal medicine. I love how I'm able to predict what's going to happen once in a while- I feel like I have actual medical knowledge. I don't. But I do generally recognize the signs of a stroke now. That could be useful. This is how I justify how I spend the nine oclock hour on Tuesday nights.

Plus, there's a great site that analyzes the medical truth behind the show- http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html . Joey used to read it out loud to me before my bad listening skills made him think I didn't care. But it's really quite interesting when I'm not in the middle of something (namely, reading other people's blogs). Good times.

Still- there's no replacing Star Trek. Television's zenith passed with the finale of Star Trek: Voyager.

Notes

I thought that writing a post a day would, you know, give people plenty of opportunities to comment. But I haven't gotten a single comment since I started this NaBloPoMo thing. Maybe the blog community is boycotting my bad and uninteresting writing? Sucks for you. I'm going to write anyway, so there. :-P

Today's weather says here comes winter. Gray and windy and occasionally sprinkling cold rain. Groan. Time to break out the outerwear from their rubbermaid containers by my bed. I think my cotton summer skirts and lovely sandals need to be retired for the year. On a happier note: the Starbucks I'm sitting in right now is decorated for Christmas, and my heart is full of joyful excitement. I'm not usually a huge Christmas person, but I'm feeling the spirit this year. We'll see if that lasts until a week after Thanksgiving, by which point I am usually tired of pop-ified Christmas carols and the color red.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I'm not going home this year. Gasp! This has caused consternation back home, but we only get Thursday and Friday off, so I would have to skip Wednesday classes to make it home in time, plus my parents are working a fair amount. I'm going to stay here and write papers so that the NEXT weekend, I can fly down to Birmingham and go to my cousin's wedding reception. He's getting married on a cruise over Thanksgiving, which is out of the question for my family, but we're going to his reception. He's the first of my cousins to get married. Scary. He's a Marine and is on leave from Iraq for this whole wedding deal, so I figure that he deserves my presence. If he's going to fly out from Iraq, I'll fly out from Indiana. Should be an interesting occasion family-drama-wise; I might finally get to meet my godfather's new wife. Sweet.

And now, I must return to working on a paper on Guatemala. Specifically, foreign involvement in the Guatemalan peace process. Dude, the UN totally rocked the negotiations. Human rights mission before there's even a formal ceasefire? Risky but so brilliant. And thank God for Norway. Seriously, what would world peace do without Norway? I shudder to think of it.

I'm such a peace nerd.

Dynamite

It's been a whopper of a week. Think of those huge groupers with the massive bodies and really ugly faces- that's been this week. Well, actually, not at all. Bad analogy. While this week was at times quite ugly, I think I learned a lot too.

I don't really want to go into details, but I guess I have to say something about what's going on after Joey said, "With everything that's happened, you post about makeup?" It's hard to know how to write about the not-so-happy times, because while I know my friends and family back home want to hear about the events of my life, good and bad, I also don't want to whine or worry everyone.

Just get it out, already. This week our (as in mine and Joey's) two year anniversary almost didn't happen. TWICE. You would think that after two years together we would see such landmines coming, or even prevent their existence, but I guess (relatively speaking) we're still new to this. Two years isn't that long in the grand scheme of things. It takes a lot to shake us- in fact, I don't think we've ever come so close to calling it quits, not even in the midst of figuring out how to manage a relationship in college during freshman year. Suddenly a cornerstone of your relationship can be wiped away with one blast of dynamite and then you find yourself back at square one. It doesn't have to mean that it's the end- but lots of work is in store if you keep going. We decided to keep going, and we'll rebuild. Right now we're just relieved that despite everything, we're still together. I adore this boy and he's pretty smitten with me, so I'm pretty sure you haven't seen the last of us yet.