Mucus Monsters, Inc.

The last week, I've been Mucus Monsters, Inc. I've been coughing, coughing, coughing... and I've been sneezing, sneezing, sneezing. This weekend has been absolutely miserable - full of almost two entire boxes of tissues and watery eyes - and yes, I'd like a cup of honey with a splash of tea, thanks.

Mom asked me to look after the house on Saturday night, and so Saturday afternoon I made my way there, tissues and pajamas in hand, and after a long, leisurely bath (that unfortunately wasn't hot enough - baths never stay at that painfully searing heat for long enough, do they?) that helped clear my sinuses a little, I fell into bed at 8:30 and slept straight through to 10:30am. (except for a brief bout of wakefulness to usher the dogs outside around 8am, and I would have slept through that if they hadn't been barking so loudly!) After acquiring caffeine in the form of tea and getting out of my pajamas, I gave my car a bath, gave my mom a hug, and went home. I've gone from feeling about 50% human (and 50% mucus producing monster, rather like the Mucinex commercial monsters.)(Also, taking a look at those monsters, the resemblance I share to the female one amuses me: big boobs and blonde hair, indeed!) to feeling something closer to 80% tonight. My nose has stopped channeling the ghost of a faucet or waterfall and the infection has moved back into my lungs like I told it to yesterday. Now I have no voice and my throat hurts, but at least I don't feel like a sodden washcloth.

In other news, I've gone on a diet again in the hopes that I can rid myself of a few more pounds before swimsuit season officially begins. I've just purchased a swimsuit (a BIKINI. LE GASP. But isn't it so pretty?!) and while I am rather pleased with the effect right now, I imagine I could be even more pleased with it after a little more dieting. So diet I will! I will update the blog with my progress, and hopefully won't complain as much to my friends, who really got an earful of it last summer. Maybe I'll get lucky and my boobs will shrink some more! (A girl can dream, right?)

A little glimpse of Emma, because I haven't blogged about her recently.

(She is so cute, isn't she?) It's hard to talk about her these days, because every day she learns so much more. Growth, I realize now, is complex, and becomes exponentially more complex the older we get. We play games, we go to the park (much more fun now that it's getting warmer! Although I am asked by other mothers how old my daughter is almost every time we go...), we watch movies (her favorite right now is Snow White), we color, we climb on things (well, Emma climbs on things and I try to discourage her from climbing everything), and sometimes we throw tantrums (Emma thinks it's funny when I mimic her throwing a tantrum. Heh. That won't last long!)

(As an aside, someone has parked their car outside of my apartment complex and is currently blasting Lady Gaga's latest single. They're having an impromptu dance party, too. I'm pretty sure they're my favorite people of the hour!)

(As a doubly aside, I've just made myself the most delicious cup of tea, which is helping my throat. Siobhan gave me these lovely boxes of Peyton and Byrne tea last summer, and they are so delicious. I'm going to have to restock next time I go to England! Siobhan, you will have to direct me toward the appropriate place to buy the magnificent stuff!)

Thursday nights have been so much fun recently - Ally and I have gone to Central Market to buy ingredients for some kind of dinner and we've had shared a meal together while relaxing a little. We've made blue cheese macaroni and cheese, stuffed shells, chili, garlic bread, and a few other things I forget right now. Since we both love to cook and we both love to experiment, we've been using these nights to try some new recipes. Ally and I are both dieting together, so we should be able to continue this tradition, just with a few more restrictions. I think we're up to the challenge!

If anyone is looking for a sweet, easy read, I recommend the book I read on Thursday (after I read the entirety of Henry V...) called Anna and the French Kiss. It's a book about a girl who, against her will, is shipped off to Paris to attend boarding school for her senior year of high school and her adventures there. Of course there is a dreamy boy, lots of drama amongst her classmates, and a happy ending! Having spent hours fighting to read Henry V for my Shakespeare class, reading this book was a breath of fresh air, and I was finished with it in probably four hours, maybe five. Also, it was a NaNoWriMo novel - and actually seeing a NaNo novel get published and be so well received by everyone who has read it makes me happy and proud of Stephanie Perkins, the author. My NaNo novel, while finished, was utter crap. I have a lot of respect for someone to even consider going back and rereading their own draft, let alone turning it into a real book.

Well, I am off to bed. I'm not quite better yet, and so I think the 12am-hour should probably be my bedtime tonight. Although I'll probably stay up for a while yet and read some of The Giver, which is the first book I have to have read for my Children's Lit class this week. Or play solitaire. I may have to attend some kind of Solitaire Addicts Anonymous group soon.

"Liveblogging"

I'm going to "live blog" my Monday night at Bennu's (my new favorite place to study). Perhaps it will end up being funny?

8:52. Coffee acquired, computer set up. What do I study first?

9:05. First Facebook/Twitter break. The Texas Travesty (a funny student-run newspaper similar to The Onion) is live-tweeting from the Student Government debate, and tweeting things like "Channeling Ralph Nader's electoral success, Sameer refers to himself as an "outsider" to government."

9:10. My Bible class is a great class to be in, but it sure makes me look incredibly devout. I don't have a problem with looking devout, but I have a problem with people thinking I am pompously advertising that I am devout. I need to stop thinking about what people probably aren't thinking about me.

9:16. Boy, the Bible sure likes to repeat itself. I just read in Acts the fourth or fifth version of Moses' life I've read so far.

9:29. My iTunes library is so spastic. Duncan Sheik, Lady Gaga, and then JET. (But it did remind me to check when Lady Gaga's new CD comes out. May 23, if anyone's interested.)

9:39. Finished reading what I needed to of Acts. The last few Mondays I've been here I've spent upward of three or four hours reading the bible... this less-than-one-hour thing gives me hope for my future sanity! I think I will take a wee break now!

9:44. At some point I will have to read a little bit of Henry V tonight . It really bothered me this morning when my professor said "Canterbury" as "Cantabarry". Ladies and gentlemen, Americanization at it's finest.

9:50. Just realized I have a 55-page PDF file written by Justin Martyr to read for tomorrow. DISLIKE.

9:58. Giggling about the name written in the front of my latest children's lit book, Chasing Vermeer. "Jonathan Getzoff". (I giggle because I'm actually a 12-year-old boy.)

10:00. Time to read Chasing Vermeer for an hour or so. And then I tackle Justin Martyr. Maybe. If I feel like it. (I'll have to.)

10:03. Curious about who Vermeer was, I googled it. DUH. Girl with a Pearl Earring and that Milkmaid painting I studied in one of my Art History classes. (Facepalm).

10:32. Ally and a friend from her class arrived and forced me to leave my comfortable, warm place inside of the cafe and go outside, where there were more available tables. Now it is hard to concentrate, but I do have some tea to help me stay warm. It's not so cold (probably about 60 degrees) but it is blustery!

10:37. More Duncan Sheik in the iTunes. Singing "Totally Fucked" (Yes, an actual song, not just gratuitous vulgarity on my part!) instead of reading. This wind is so distracting.

10:41. Tea was not quite as hot as I like it when they gave it to me, it was at the temperature that most people drink tea as opposed to almost-boiling, which I prefer. Ally and I joked that it wasn't hot enough for me (being part British). She encouraged me to go inside and complain about the tepid tea. (I won't do it, but a Funny came out of our conversation: "Do you know why British people drink scalding hot tea? To melt our frigid insides!")

10:49. Flying south to seek warmer climes! (Leaving Bennu right now...)

Not the most interesting or productive evening, I suppose, but I think of telling you guys some of these things while I am studying, but can never seem to come up with a way to say them. Maybe I'll live blog again sometime and you'll get something of more variety.

(For your information, the evening finished with Ally and I rapping poorly, Ally teaching me how to booty dance and threatening to teach me how to walk in heels tomorrow night by marching me up and down the aisles at Target. Help?)

Caffeine, Adrenaline and Poor Choices

Hello, all!

As those of you who follow me on twitter may have realized (due to my frequent tweets hashtaged #MBUdiaries), Friday night and all of Saturday I spent working at Merit Badge University, which is an opportunity for thousands of boy scouts to descend upon the university (rather like a plague) and earn a few merit badges.

It was rewarding but exhausting, and rather like an experiment for me, since I'd never been awake more than 24 hours before. Friday night was MBU overnight, which started at 7pm and which was APO's opportunity to staple things, sort things, and do whatever else needed to be done before the boy scouts arrived. (We were able to rent space in the business school, so it was also an opportunity to make fools out of ourselves in front of business majors who apparently do homework on Friday night. What?!) Nobody slept more than an hour or two.

We were done with all major work by about 1am, which was apparently quite unusual for an MBU overnight. At 5am, we were put to work again, moving everything from the business school across the street to the UTC, the building where all the classes would be taught and where our volunteer headquarters would exist. We met the sunrise (we couldn't WATCH the sunrise like I hoped because it was cloudy) in the throes of caffeine withdrawal and exhaustion.

The boy scouts were supposed to arrive at 7am, but many showed up at 6:30, because apparently boy scouts can keep time and do things like show up early. Volunteers were fed donuts and coffee and sent to their rooms around 8. At this point, I had little concept of time but I was happy to go to my classroom armed with both a soda AND a cup of coffee. Double the caffeine! Weeee!

Now, a few weeks ago I 'tricked' Mom into agreeing to teach a class called Personal Management (money and time management) for MBU. I don't know how I would have done without Mom, who allowed me to sulk at the lectern with my computer and not speak much. Somewhere in the middle of the first class, I lost my grasp on the concept of "time", except that every once and a while I would glance at the clock and calculate how long I'd been awake and how long it was until I'd go to sleep. When at some point during the day Mom asked me how I was feeling, I'm pretty sure I told her that I was doing well, but running on caffeine, adrenaline, and poor choices at that point. There's a point where you stop feeling any more tired, and you're almost tricked into believing that you aren't tired at all.

So by the time I got to sleep, I'd been awake for 34 hours. Not doing THAT again anytime soon! I got home and slept from 6pm until 9am, and at that point I decided it might be a good idea to get up and shower.

MBU was a huge success, and Mom said she'd be willing to teach again next year... so even though I 'tricked' her, she hasn't yet disowned me or cut me off. Yet, anyway. ;)

Well, despite the fact I gave APO 23 hours of my time this weekend, I'm off to the Sunday meeting and then off to study. I think I'm ALMOST ready to become a functioning human being again, given a little more caffeine.

Coffee Zombie

If I were a zombie, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't crave brains. I'd crave coffee.

I've been less productive in my apartment recently, and so rather often, I migrate over to this coffee shop about two miles from my apartment that has delicious and cheap coffee to do homework. It's open 24 hours a day, so there's no threat of imminent closure - which I am a fan of.

At the moment, I'm reading a lot of the Old Testament for my Bible class. It's tough to wade through and thoroughly exhausting. Usually by the end of the night (somewhere around midnight or 1am for me) I crawl home and collapse. No matter how recently I had a cup of coffee or tea. Mentally spent, I fall asleep quickly.

This week is unusual because Emma and her family are on vacation, so I do not have to go to work. It tricks me into thinking that I have spades of extra, spare time which which to goof off, but in reality, it's not that much.

Well, I'm off to go back home now. No more coffee for me tonight!

Fanfiction, danube-ing, and the stinking Texas weather

Recently, I have stumbled upon someone who writes fanfiction on fanfiction.net (a site which I, rather predictably, frequent often). This person has written 247 stories since late 2008, and while I usually have a problem with ridiculously prolific writers, I suspend my judgment for Hans von Hozel.

He is a German from Berlin, and he supposedly writes to "make an improvement of his English". (I love people whose native language is not English; I think their sentence structure is something beautiful that native English speakers generally can't replicate.)

However, poor Hans von Hozel's English is not improving through his fanfiction-y endeavors... really, he just makes a fool out of himself and his poorly constructed English. And he really doesn't know anything about the categories which he writes about, he just takes the titles and goes with them. What is so brilliant about Hans' stories, however, is how hilarious they all are! His poor grammar makes for some seriously side-splitting moments:

For example, his fanfiction about Beethoven (supposedly the dog, but he makes it about the composer):

Beethoven were try to make a musics but no musics went on the paper.

"Oh no I have run out of musics!" say Beethoven, sit at piano.

Suddenly, Mozart ran through the door.

"I have a potion!" say Mozart, "To make your composings of the better!"

"Is goodly!" say Beethoven, and a drinking of a potion.

"AHAHAHAHAHAH!" laugh Mozart, "IS WRONG POTION!"

The potion made Beethoven loose all his music skills.

"AHAHAHAHAH!" laugh Mozart, "NOW I AM THE BEST AT MUSIC!"

And Mozart went away.

"OH NO MY MUSICS!" say Beethoven, make a sadly.

Or of Waterloo:

One day, Napoleon was trying to take many Swedens.

"NOT OF THE TAKING SWEDENS!" shout ABBA, as they danube to where Napoleon was, "We must defend our ABBA Empire again!"

But Napoleon had become equip with many horses.

"Nay," say the horses, as they prepare with their horseshoe!

"Ha ha ha," say ABBA, "But the joke has made itself onto you, as we make a poison into your horses apples!"

"Nay?" ask the horses, and they all make a fall down.

"OH NO!" shout Napoleon, "I HAVE MISCALCULATED MY ERROR!"

ABBA danubed closer to Napoleon.
"No!" say Napoleon, "Stay back you malfunction!"

And so ABBA made a lazer beam over Napoleon and Napoleon made explode.

"Is a victory to the making!" say ABBA!

ABBA gave each other high fives and danubed again to Swedens.

For some reason, he uses danube as a verb? I don't know how to danube, but I can only imagine that danubing is some kind of awesome dance or something!

Do visit his profile and click through a few of his stories... They are SO FUNNY.

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Back to homework for me! I'm having trouble concentrating tonight as I have the whole internet at my disposal! I am certainly ready for it to be Friday! Last night, I crashed at 10:15 and slept right through till 9:30, and as I feel like I might be getting a little sick (probably something to do with the weather, which vaulted itself from below freezing to seventy degrees and then back to below freezing TWICE in the last two weeks) so the sleep was much appreciated! I hope to get to bed before midnight again tonight. :)

Texas Snowpocalypse!

It's happened! Ally and I ventured out of my apartment at 3:30am and walked around for an hour... it was AWESOME.

The snow was BEAUTIFUL. The campus was incredible - students out, playing, shouting "TEXAS FIGHT!" all over the place. I dunno why they were shouting it, but hey, pride in one's school, right?

We've just got the notice that the school is officially closed tomorrow, so we'll be staying in, staying warm, and probably reading a lot.

But TONIGHT... We moseyed over to campus!

And then the capitol building! :D

And into the streets! (Hell yeah I'm in my pajamas!)

And then we got home at 4:30am and attempted to get warm.

In a, um, variety of ways...

Stay warm, everyone!

Coldpocalypse

The Northeast may be going through Snowmageddon... Well, Texas is going through the Coldpocalypse. It may or may not become the Ice or Snowpocalypse... It's supposed to snow on Thursday night. Fingers crossed?

Yesterday, I finally turned on my heat, considering the temperatures hovered around the high 20s and the low 30s, with the windchill as low as the high teens. This is weather that not many Texans know how to deal with, especially considering most of us were in shorts and tshirts over the weekend. Today is even colder (the temperature was 18 degrees outside with a windchill of 4!) and when I woke up, expecting to feel cozy and warm, happy to have waved my white flag and conceded to central heat (I have been telling myself that I, too, have been participating in a sort of "Furnace Wars", a competition that one of my favorite knitter celebrities, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (the Yarn Harlot) created years ago with her family. It's a competition to see who can last the longest each winter without turning on their heat. This is a much harder war to win up in Canada where she lives though!) when, to my surprise and immediate chagrin, I noticed my nose was cold. If my heat was on, why was my nose cold? The answer came quickly: my heat wasn't on. Actually, nothing was on. I had no power. (Also, it was 48 degrees in my room. BRR.)

Hooray, Coldpocalypse!

The entirety of Texas has turned their heat on and so the entirety of Texas has been exepriencing rolling blackouts. I still had school this morning, though, because my fancy university has its own fancy power plant and so it generates all it's own electricity.

The funniest part of the Coldpocalypse has been my friends' Facebook statuses. They are things like:

"18 degrees with rolling blackouts in Austin? Ladies and gentlemen, hell is freezing over."

"I can't feel my face! I can't feel my hands or feet AND I can't feel my body! OMG I DON'T EXIST! WAIT... 'I think, therefore I am.' Thank you, Descartes for the only affirmation of my existence today."

"I really think weather forecasters shouldn't give the temperatures like they do. 'Oh, it's 31 degrees... But it's gonna feel like 19 because of wind and no sunlight.' Really? Which one of those is more important?"

"I totally woke up this morning hoping for a barely lukewarm shower by a single dim candle followed by the inability to charge my phone. FALSE. I wished for none of these and would like a refund please."

"I would like to thank the rolling blackouts for my day off work and the roaring fire that I have every excuse to have. Huzzah!"

Everyone stay warm! I'm going to burrow under another blanket and revel in the power I temporarily have!