I'm just going to pretend it hasn't been a month

I heart election day. There's just something about being allowed to go and hit the button on the machine (or whatever the machine happens to do). Isn't democracy great? I like to get up early and go, not because I'm worried about lines or anything, but it's a special day and I get excited. I feel like that's kind of dorky. I don't care.

I applied to grad school. I think I'll probably get in, but then I think that I'm being cocky and worry that I won't get in. Because I only applied to the one program... Usually I'm against limiting yourself like that, but there weren't any other programs, except in North Carolina. If this doesn't work out, maybe I'll look at that one again. But probably not for a few years.

I have all of these crafty-type things, and cookbooks, and recipes that I want to try out. I get bogged down by lack of space and I spend my time wishing for a bigger kitchen or more storage where I could better organize papers and yarns and such. Also, cooking for one isn't very much fun. It's much easier to just make spaghetti or whatever when there's no one else to please. I'd like to do something like the butternut squash lasagna again, but I'm uninspired. I have an acorn squash that I need to use, but it's just too much trouble for one person. Maybe tomorrow. 

I think I'm ready for some sort of change, I just can't find the proper location to look for that change. We'll see about the grad school, but I'd also like to change my room around, or maybe be in a different apartment. I like my apartment, but I feel like a new place wouldn't be so bad. This also might say more than I mean it to, but I'd also be really motivated at work if I got a new desk. I can't figure out a better place to put my computer or anything, so it's sort of stuck in a rut. 

I have one more day of work and then my two days off! I'm very excited about these days, though I haven't made any plans yet. If the weather's nice maybe I'll take a walk down by the river and read. I also only have a stretch of 6 days next before 5 days off, and only 1 more stretch of 8 left in the year! Yay for vacation and comp days and saving them for the holidays!

It's probably time to go to bed now. I will do so.

Butternut Squash!

Jon took me to Bazin's on Church for my birthday in March and we had Butternut Squash ravioli for an appetizer. It was amazing and since then we've been kind of obsessed with butternut squash. So I found this set of recipes on marthastewart.com and I've been wanting to try them.

So tonight I made butternut squash lasagna, and it was a rousing success! I definitely want to make it again sometime. Maybe for my family or something. Hopefully they'll enjoy it too...

Why can't I just sit at home and make things all day?

I've recently decided that I'm interested in too many things. I end up frustrated or disappointed in myself because I don't do enough with crafts and baking, etc because I just don't have the time. I would love to be able to make lots of lovely things, but I never seem to get around to it.

In college I taught myself how to knit, and I made a few things, but then I got interested in sewing and embroidery, so the knitting took a back seat. Now my sewing machine just lives in my closet and I have an unfinished embroidery project sitting on my desk while I'm playing with making books and pretty papers. Meanwhile, I also want to learn to quilt and do some more sewing, not to mention baking and cooking fun things....

So as you can see, there's too much to do and no time to do it. I have to work (especially to finance some of these hobbies - yarn and fabric can be expensive!) and I'm usually away from home for at least 11 hours on the days that I work. Factor in the need for sleep and food and general rest and I generally don't get around to much.

I'm trying to handle this by just putting projects on the back burner. I'm keeping a list of things that I find inspiring or projects that I could make from blogs in my google reader that hopefully I'll get around to eventually. I'm also trying to just focus on one project at a time, so I can feel that sense of accomplishment. For instance, we're having a baby shower for a co-worker today, so I made the new baby girl a fleece baby blanket. It's extremely easy  - you just cut fringes into the fleece rectangles and tie them together - instant blanket! Pictures to come soon...

I was right

It was delightful. My only regret is that I don't have the rest of the series to read right now. But which of the other books to choose next?

So many books, so little time

I haven't been doing as much reading lately as I like. Errands and crafty-ness seem to eat up all of my time outside of work, so I'm left with reading on the metro and before bed. I finished the latest Jane Green book recently (after waiting for it on hold since July...) and so I went back to the library yesterday on my day off and ended up with this pile of books. I've already finished Twenties Girl, the newest book by Sophie Kinsella. I actually ended up with it in Large Print, because I put both copies in the library system on hold and that's the one that came in first. I guess it's the same story, just a little disconcerting. I did enjoy it, though possibly not as much as the Shopaholic series.

The rest of the books I picked up were all on the new books shelf. At least 2 of them appear to be part of a series. One of them clearly was, so I put it back and went up to the mystery section where luckily they had the first one of the series. I started it today and I think it's delightful. Of course, I've only really gotten into the intro material, where the characters are all being set up, but I'm very hopeful - especially because there are 14 books in the series, so it should last me a while.

Now I just need another beach vacation so I can catch up on all this reading!

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe

This video is ridiculously addictive...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

Oh the drama

So, after much trauma, including 2 hours in the car, a police officer, and many tears, I have finally taken the GRE and don't have to think about it any more. Apparently it's good for you to be near hysterics right before you take the exam, as my math score improved over 100 points from any of my practice exams. My verbal wasn't quite as high as I would like, but it's on par with the practice scores I've been getting. Now on to the application!

Because of my morning trauma, I treated myself to a Panera lunch (why don't they have Paneras in the city!?) and a trip to Target for ... bathroom cleaning supplies. It's odd, but it does feel like a treat to be off work and finally able to clean my bathroom and my room and everything that I haven't been able to get to the past 8 days. Just another example of how my work schedule messes with my mind I guess.

GRE

I'm taking the GRE on thursday and for some reason I am extremely nervous. That is all.

Trader Joe's to the Rescue!

I had a bad day at work today. Everything just seemed to go wrong and I had to have a couple difficult meetings. So, I decided to take the bus home from the metro. There's one bus that I can take that drops me off right next to the Trader Joe's down the street. So I decided that I would also stop at Trader Joe's to get something quick for dinner. They also have these awesome ice cream sandwiches. They're the kind with chocolate chip cookies and a lot of ice cream that are rolled in mini chocolate chips - they're amazing. So I thought that I deserved an ice cream sandwich after my bad day.

Cut to 2 hours later, after dinner, which is prime ice cream sandwich time. I opened the package from my freezer... and it's disgusting! I don't know what happened, but it looked like one of the cookies had melted and mixed with the cookie, but it was brown soupy mass that was clearly not my beautiful treat.

So I decided to take Trader Joe's up on their "if you don't like it, bring it back and get a refund" guarantee. I walked my box of ice cream sandwiches back down the street and they got me a new box. And now I'm enjoying a wonderful blend of cookie, chocolate, and ice cream.


I heart Trader Joe's.

Plugging Away

I'm starting to accumulate a pile of books that I want to read again, but I'm forced to put them to the side to prepare for that great 20s coming of age tradition, the GRE...

I'll be taking the GRE soon, which I just realized the other day was in just 8 days, so I've been trying to focus more on studying. I've been slowly plugging away at it for about a month, but now I'm trying to be more focused. It's pretty much just like the SAT, and I've been pretty consistently doing well on the verbal. I just haven't taken a formal math class since high school (eek!) so I'm having to relearn how to do simple things, like geometry, or how to add and multiply fractions. I think I'll do fine if I can learn to manage my time well. You get 45 minutes to answer 28 questions and I spend too much time on the early questions, which leaves me with not enough time to answer the last 10 or so. I suppose I just have to learn when to cut and run on some of the tougher ones.

Of course, I'm also not positive I need to take the GRE for my program, but I've already registered and paid so I'm doing it. Maybe I'm just an overachiever...      

Weekends

Since I get so few weekends off, I always feel pressure to do something special. This weekend Jon and I explored DC a bit and I got to do some crafting stuff, which always makes me feel productive and happy. 

I haven't been to the Eastern Market in a while, so I drove down there on Saturday morning and Jon met me there (he can walk from his apartment!) I love all the colors...

 

 

And then we had crepes! 

Then we decided to go to Georgetown. We got cupcakes and I took pictures of flowers and stones...

 

and Jon

Then we went to the National Cathedral, because why not? There was a wedding just finishing up and Jon actually ran into his old project manager. It did make us wonder who you have to know to get married at the National Cathedral...

On Sunday my friend Sarah invited me over to do some crafting (we're both doing Elise's class). I was able to finish up a card project I've been working on and start a new book. I was inspired by green and sort of went from there...

 
I like crafting with other people, so hopefully there will be more in our future. In the mean time, I still have 2 days off from work!

Inspiration

I've begun taking an online workshop taught by the very creative Elise Blaha. I don't usually do those types of things. My style is more of a thinking and never doing which can be very frustrating and adds a lot of stress. So in the past month I've started doing. I used to knit in college and I've done some cross-stitch/embroidery projects. 

I like making things for other people, since I'm usually not always sure what to do with things once I'm done making them. The workshop (and Elise's blog) have inspired me to try scrapbooking and what she calls art journaling. I've never done much scrapbooking, since they're so large and seem like they have to be perfect, and if you chronicle one thing, you have to do everything. Elise's approach is much more casual and spur of the moment, and the books that she produces are much smaller and really seem like something I could do easily while not worrying about perfection. 

So I've started working on a few projects and I have some ideas for gifts for Christmas and such. I'm trying to not do too much at once as that can be overwhelming, but just make a few changes here and there. I've felt much less stressed about work and everything since I've started doing some of these projects, so I think it's a good thing.

My current one small change is to try to take more pictures. As Jon has started law school recently, I thought it would be perfect to document. Jon didn't seem to agree and wasn't thrilled with the idea of pictures at his orientation. But, the other day we were at the Law Center and there was no one around, so I insisted...

Law School!!

Serious face

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I finished my book yesterday, so now I feel a little lost. I just can't get over how good it was! I was confining myself to reading on the metro, so that I wouldn't finish it too fast, but then yesterday I was waiting for Jon, and I really wanted to know what happened next, so I went ahead and finished. Do you ever get the feeling like you are so excited to pick a book back up and read straight through to the end, but at the same time you want it to last forever and ever?

Peanut Butter Truffle Brownies!

At my job we work long stretches between days off. I'm currently working day 8 of 8 in a row. We also have night meetings once a month for the whole team. That happens to be tonight. So to make up for the fact that I have to stay at work for almost 3 extra hours on my 8th day in a row (!) I made brownies! Peanut butter truffle brownies to be exact.

I found the recipe a few weeks ago and have been meaning to try it and I figured today was the perfect time. I made the brownies before small group last night and then made the peanut butter topping and chocolate last night. They set in the fridge overnight, and then I cut them this morning and brought them in. I had to use my gladware because I was not going to carry a brownie pan on the metro. They were tightly packed, but it seemed to work. I hope everyone enjoys them tonight!

Out of focus cell phone pictures!

Public Speaking

I've never been a fan of public speaking, though I can't say that I've ever felt paralyzed by it either. My job requires that I get up in front of our staff most mornings and be perky and say "Good Morning!" and give announcements and such so that our reps don't fall asleep. I wasn't a fan of this when I started, as I was usually unsure of what to say and I would stumble over my words. The danger was always that I am allowed to just hang back and never speak if I want to, which some people on our team do.

Instead I've started doing it more, and since I've been doing it for over a year and a half, it seems like it's helping me become more confident. I'm not sure how it would translate to other times of public speaking, but at least standing in front of my staff giving announcements doesn't make me nervous at all.

We just started a new "mini-training" program at our morning meetings. Each of us on the leadership team had to write a training on a different topic and joy! mine was picked to start us off. So this morning I lead the training, which went really well. I was complimented by our training staff, management, and some of the reps, which always feels nice. I was a little more nervous speaking in that setting, even though it's the same people that I talk at all the time. I was trying to make it not boring and dry, but also get the information across that was necessary. Hopefully I succeeded.

Now to fight with the copier some more to get the supplemental information out...

Confessions of St. Augustine - modern edition

This post is very long, so feel free to skip...

I've been reading the Confessions of St. Augustine, which I find really interesting and strangely modern, given that he lived in the 4th century. Especially this part: Before he became a Christian, Augustine got caught up in the Manichaean philosophy/religion. One of their bishops was called Faustus, who was revered for his eloquence.

CHAPTER VI
10. For almost the whole of the nine years that I listened with unsettled mind to the Manichean teaching I had been looking forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus. For all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet, when they were unable to answer the questions I raised, always referred me to his coming. They promised that, in discussion with him, these and even greater difficulties, if I had them, would be quite easily and amply cleared away. When at last he did come, I found him to be a man of pleasant speech, who spoke of the very same things they themselves did, although more fluently and in a more agreeable style. But what profit was there to me in the elegance of my cupbearer, since he could not offer me the more precious draught for which I thirsted? My ears had already had their fill of such stuff, and now it did not seem any better because it was better expressed nor more true because it was dressed up in rhetoric; nor could I think the man's soul necessarily wise because his face was comely and his language eloquent. But they who extolled him to me were not competent judges. They thought him able and wise because his eloquence delighted them. At the same time I realized that there is another kind of man who is suspicious even of truth itself, if it is expressed in smooth and flowing language. But thou, O my God, hadst already taught me in wonderful and marvelous ways, and therefore I believed--because it is true--that thou didst teach me and that beside thee there is no other teacher of truth, wherever truth shines forth. Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels--both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.

11. That eagerness, therefore, with which I had so long awaited this man, was in truth delighted with his action and feeling in a disputation, and with the fluent and apt words with which he clothed his ideas. I was delighted, therefore, and I joined with others--and even exceeded them--in exalting and praising him. Yet it was a source of annoyance to me that, in his lecture room, I was not allowed to introduce and raise any of those questions that troubled me, in a familiar exchange of discussion with him. As soon as I found an opportunity for this, and gained his ear at a time when it was not inconvenient for him to enter into a discussion with me and my friends, I laid before him some of my doubts. I discovered at once that he knew nothing of the liberal arts except grammar, and that only in an ordinary way. He had, however, read some of Tully's orations, a very few books of Seneca, and some of the poets, and such few books of his own sect as were written in good Latin. With this meager learning and his daily practice in speaking, he had acquired a sort of eloquence which proved the more delightful and enticing because it was under the direction of a ready wit and a sort of native grace. Was this not even as I now recall it, O Lord my God, Judge of my conscience? My heart and my memory are laid open before thee, who wast even then guiding me by the secret impulse of thy providence and wast setting my shameful errors before my face so that I might see and hate them.

CHAPTER VII
12. For as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was ignorant in those arts in which I had believed him eminent, I began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all these perplexities that troubled me--though I realized that such ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of his piety, if he had not been a Manichean. For their books are full of long fables about the sky and the stars, the sun and the moon; and I had ceased to believe him able to show me in any satisfactory fashion what I so ardently desired: whether the explanations contained in the Manichean books were better or at least as good as the mathematical explanations I had read elsewhere. But when I proposed that these subjects should be considered and discussed, he quite modestly did not dare to undertake the task, for he was aware that he had no knowledge of these things and was not ashamed to confess it. For he was not one of those talkative people--from whom I had endured so much--who undertook to teach me what I wanted to know, and then said nothing. Faustus had a heart which, if not right toward thee, was at least not altogether false toward himself; for he was not ignorant of his own ignorance, and he did not choose to be entangled in a controversy from which he could not draw back or retire gracefully. For this I liked him all the more. For the modesty of an ingenious mind is a finer thing than the acquisition of that knowledge I desired; and this I found to be his attitude toward all abstruse and difficult questions.

I'm just saying...

Summer Reading

I've read many books this summer, though not quite as many as I intended to read. I'll post some of them here eventually, but I'm really into what I'm reading right now - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  I bought it on a whim in a bookshop at the beach with my friend Sarah. 

I always judge books by their titles and covers, and this one appealed to me. I'm so happy I did! It's written in letter format and takes place in the British Isles (my favorite place) - specifically between a woman in London and the residents of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France. It takes place just after WW2, when Guernsey was occupied by the Germans. The characters are delightful and I can't wait to finish it - I never thought I'd say my metro rides weren't long enough...