Research=Hell (and) Hell=Research

I am convinced hell will consist of one or perhaps both (if you are in need of extra punishment) of the following options:

1) An eternal research project which will never end but yet will have ever looming deadlines. There will be an eternal literature review in conjunction with an eternal research proposal and defenses and absolutely endless data collection and analysis.

2) An eternal car ride in a small compact car going nowhere. Just endless driving, FOREVER. No bathroom breaks, no getting out to stretch your legs, not even asking where you are, because you are NOWHERE. No scenery, no snacks, no magazines, just you and the car. Perhaps for extra punishment there will be a couple of people you really don’t like to fight with for eternity.

I’m not really sure which of these options would be worse. Its a toss up.

I think I need to cut back on my WOOT time

I was on WOOT again, and I found this shirt as one of the derby options to vote for. I almost laughed out loud in the library.

Therefore I:

a) want one;

b) will wear it with pride;

c) need to start dumpster diving again. I miss having more bags of salad than I know what to do with.

Hmmm, I don't know about you WOOT

I bought a WOOT shirt. Only $6.66 too, wait a minute, isn't 666 a bad number? What is WOOT trying to pull. The deal is you don't know what one you are going to get, so it could be a really crappy shirt, but its only $6.66. I probably should wait until there's one I really like and pay the extra $4 but what's the fun in that?

It won't die on my watch

Don't worry Lauren, I'm watering the tree. Just in case you don't believe me, this is for you:

I guess I would hallucinate tootsie rolls too

Thanksgiving: movies, key lime pie, apple cider, Chinese buffets and Mom getting a Gmail account. Family, food, food, more food and Mom trying to get the mouse to work. What more could you want for Thanksgiving?

P.S. the Red Panda Buffet has sushi! All you can eat sushi. Now true, its not great sushi but its all you can eat.

Have you noticed nobody really talks to each other at buffets? Its more of a "Wow, this is really good"; "I'm going to get more of this"; "Aww, its all gone, are they going to put more out?"; "Oh, this is not so good, don't get that"; "Hey, where did you get that?"; "I'm so full, I'll just eat this last thing"; "Where is the dessert?".

The whole meal you are either getting up to get more food, thinking about what you are going to get next, deciding if what you are eating is good enough to get again, worrying if it'll be gone before you get up again or trying to figure out how to get the most food in the least trips. Basically there's not much room to think about the people you're eating with. Its really all about you and the food.

Who's ready for Christmas?

Last week, with Chipper's help; we went across the street, and over the fence, and through the woods, and over the creek, and watched out for the campus police, and cut down our Christmas tree! P.S. I stole these photos from your blog LoBo, so if they look familiar....It turned out to be a little bigger than it looked in the woods, but Janoodle trimmed it up nicely. It only looks slightly pregnant from a certain angle, but that's appropriate considering the room it's in. We do call it the Living Womb after all.

Pardon Me (I Didn't Knit That for You)

Hahahhah! So ridiculous....

Aquariums ARE pretty important

My new camera came! I haven't had one since running down Main street on Halloween night. Its a long story...

I bought a Canon SD790 thanks to Nantan's recommendation. Same price range as my old camera but the photos are ten times better! I still don't know how to use 99.9% of the features but I'll work on that. The camera manual is over 200 pages long. I've had textbooks shorter than that.The camera maker must have thought aquariums were pretty important since they included a mode just to take photos of aquariums. Not underwater, there's a mode for that too; this mode is just for aquariums. Good thing I have an aquarium, hmmm?

There's one in every family

Last night we found out Mowgli is even weirder than we thought, or rather Kristin did.

Its never dull when you're giving people drugs

I spoke with an elderly couple today and this particular couple had gotten married many years ago when they were young. They then got divorced rather quickly and married other people. Thirty years later both their spouses died and they got back together! There they sat today, back together and happy as Mowgli eating pumpkin bread. Neither of them could stop giggling long enough for me to do any kind of teaching.

When no one's looking...

Its always been a mystery what Princess Mowgli does to my laptop to make it collapse into a comatose state. So what does the little bugger do when she thinks no one is looking? Sleep? Eat? Chase mice? Oh, no, that would be too normal. Apparently Her Majesty's forbidden pleasure is violently jumping up and down on my laptop keyboard. Explains a lot.

Christmas Is The New Halloween

Come to think of it the weekend actually started with Halloween which we decided to skip and celebrate Christmas instead.
We figured Halloween and Thanksgiving are rather dull holidays anyway and so why not get things started early?

MJ wanted to dress up as a JMU Girl but we convinced her to wear clothes.

We tried our best to spread holiday cheer everywhere we went. The bus we ended up riding seemed like it held enough people to populate an entire country. A very small, loud, smelly and inebriated country.

The rarest sight of the night ended up being LoBo Riding A Bike. She didn't seem to enjoy it much but Janoodle and I did.

Posh Horse Races and Salami

Last weekend was full of all sorts of fun. It started out with craving salami and going to visit Hope and friends at Montpelier where she's an archeologist. I love saying I have a friend who's an archeologist; it makes me feel exotic.

Anyway there were horse races on the grounds and we got to tour the mansion as well. It was all very posh and beautiful and the weather was perfect.

Rich horse racing people pay enormous amounts of money to drink lots of wine and watch the horses run around. Fortunately we didn't have to pay thanks to Hope and we got to eat amazing salami and delicious cake I can't pronounce or spell the name of. We also saw some pretty ridiculous hats.

It's Alive!

Its amazing how much TV you can watch even if you don't have one. We watched all the debates live online and now all the big networks have live online election coverage. Its amazing! Soon we won't have people sitting all day in front of their giant televisions; instead they'll spend all day in front of their giant computer screens.

CBS online LIVE

MSNBC online LIVE

CNN online LIVE

ABC online LIVE

Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me It Was So Great?

After getting emails for 50 million weeks telling me to vote; I did! And you know what? I don't know why I haven't been voting all along.

Even though I went through unit after unit of US history and government; I don't think I understood until tonight why people fight so long and hard for the right to vote. Now I finally understand what all the fuss is about.

It gave me this great feeling that I mattered and contributed something worthwhile to the world. It sounds weird but it made me feel like a Real Person. Like I said, it sounds weird.

So Good, So Great, So Long Ago

Chipper reminded me last night of The Best Spring Break Ever last spring. Its hard to believe it was only seven or eight months ago. Lets reminisce for a bit:

Disney movies; BODY BODY!; the jacuzzi; Japanese steak house; Titanic; thrift stores; spaghetti dinner committees; sand dunes; seashells; 3:10 To Yuma; afternoon pancakes; kites; surfing; night swims; puzzles; frisbee; amazing stars. So good.

"You See What I Have to Live With?" (as Lauren always says)

So its October, right? Halloween, pumpkins, pies, all that harvest-ish stuff. Apparently Janoodle did not get the memo. I came downstairs this evening and she was dressed as follows: Yes, that is a giant candy cane in her hand and yes, she is threatening Lauren with it.

You see the type of dangerous crazy person we live with? She mistakes Halloween for Christmas and laundry baskets for chairs. Next thing you know she'll be wearing her knee socks on her head and trying to eat her camo shorts.

How Not to Write a Literature Review

1. Get up at 11am everyday, even weekdays. In fact have no schedule whatsoever. That really helps.

2. Once you actually get out of bed, leisurely have coffee, read a newspaper, check your email, watch the Ellen show, reminisce about old friends. Basically waste time doing nothing productive.

3. At about noon, just as you are about to start writing, realize you have not had lunch yet. Make something elaborate, in fact turn on the TV again. Maybe Racheal Ray is on and can show you something to make.

4. When lunch is over, 3 hours later, remember you need to go to a store that closes at 5pm. Well, need is a relative term. It is more like you want to go since they might have something you need. Reasons you can’t go tomorrow? Well, for one thing, you are going to be working hard tomorrow.

5. When you get back from the store, realize you haven’t had dinner. All those fresh ingredients Rachael Ray told you to buy are going to go bad. So make a couple of recipes, and watch TV while you eat, and after.

6. Boy, cooking sure make you tired. Relax a little and mess around on the internet. You deserve it. Whoops, stay away from research sites now.

7. Upload all those pics from last weekend. Tag and comment on all of them. Except of course the ones of your cousin and her new boyfriend who hasn’t facebooked you yet.

8. Sit and mope about your bum getting a little flabby. Decide to do something about your flabby bum right then and take a run. As you pass by the piles of research articles, remind yourself you have to take time for yourself.

9. Running with a flabby bum makes you really sweaty and sore. So take a nice warm bath, you deserve it after such a long day.

10. Well, its pretty late to start on research now, you wouldn’t get anything done before bed anyway. So put on your jammies and curl up with a book. Wow, what a day, how do you ever fit it all in? The problem is you just don’t have time for writing a literature reveiw, there’s just so much to do.

Sweatpants; Fall Colors; Brothers; Football; What more could you ask for? (well , maybe not football)

Sweatpants:
This past weekend started when I bought the Best Pair of Sweatpants Ever at a local thrift store. They were so good that Natanya and I decided to let ourselves go and dress like bums for the rest of the weekend. Or at least I did; I wore them for 4 days straight. It was phenomenal.

Here is a picture of when we actually decided to leave the house. I am not putting a picture of me up because the Best Pair of Sweatpants Ever are not attractive. Shocking right?

Brothers; Football:
I finally went to visit Matthew at Liberty U. The fall colors on the way there and back were beautiful.

The weather was horrible at first but it ended up becoming very, very sunny. Liberty also ended up creaming the other team, whoever they were.



We then met up with some of Matt's roommates and then we all squinted and banged our thundersticks together.

It turns out that thundersticks are very, very important at football games. They save you from looking like you don't know what is going on since you just bang your thundersticks when everybody else does. Its like lemmings off a cliff; college football style.

Smells like snow...and Obama

Since Obama decided to come to JMU, Lauren, Jeanne and I decided to brave the cold and go hear him speak. It turns out that a lot of other people had the same idea, a lot turning out to be over 25,000 people. We found out that people started lining up the night before and some of our neighbors got in line at 9 in the morning!

We ended up lining up in a field behind UREC since we were trying to avoid the line that stretched all the way to the Arboretum. We got there at 2 and Jeanne joined us at 3 and by the time we left we were so cold none of us could feel our fingers.

It turns out we were lucky we were in the field since before Obama went into the Convocation center he stopped and talked to the crowd! Everyone started running towards the corner where he was speaking which made it pretty exciting.

He basically just said "hey I'm Obama" (Jeanne's paraphrase) and told us to make sure to vote.

We thought the helicopter in the field across from our house was Obama's; but it ended up being Warner's.