TGIF (Tonsillectomy Edition)

My lovely suitemates from the past semester - I miss them already! From left: me, Karynn, Katie, Masumi, and Caitlin.

1. All I've been doing since my tonsillectomy has been resting at home.
2. My favorite thing for dinner lately has been black raspberry gelato...mmm.
3. One of many things that annoys me about dogs relative to cats is their bark! bark! bark!
4. A nice long walk would be nice if I had the energy.
5. Knowing that friends wanted to pay me a visit would be some good news.
6. When all is said and done, this recovery thing hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping, tomorrow my plans include watching movies and Sunday, I want to watch movies!


Awesome movies I've seen this week (the first two were the only ones I hadn't seen before), any of which are highly recommended for a sick day:
Casablanca
Milk
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Animal House
Good Will Hunting
Mr. Holland's Opus
plus Season 1 of Arrested Development

Dang, I really have nothing to talk about. My life consists of hydrocodone, movies, and frozen beverages.

Too tired for anything of substance. Later, y'all.

TGIF - and an important plug!

This picture, taken last week, is already outdated...baby Charlotte is growing by the day!

1. Join me in praising God for beautiful weather on Spring Weekend.
2. Put a little Bach in your day!
3. Happiness is a handmade card slipped under my door when I was having a rough morning. Also, a warm gun (bang bang shoot shoot).
4. Trying to figure out the summer internship/job/money situation has got me feeling anxious and confused.
5. I'm waiting for the day when I finally get my tonsils out. Which will be in about a month, if you're wondering.
6. Taking a break for tea and conversation with my suitemates is hard to resist.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to seeing Nas, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, and Deer Tick, tomorrow my plans include general Spring Weekend madness and Sunday, I want to play a gig at the Everyman Bistro with the Saxtet!





And now for the plug...

Please please please go here and vote for my amazing suitemate, Karynn, and her team - they are finalists to win a $10,000 grant! Their project, called ImMEDIAte Justice, sounds amazing - "Empowering young women from South Central L.A. to make innovative films about reproductive justice." You can read more about it on the site where you vote.

Not only do I love this project because I love Karynn and her passion for social justice through media, but I'm also a big fan of peer education, especially sex education, where what's available in the schools might be lacking or non-existant. This isn't just someone coming in from the outside to educate teens - this is giving young women the tools to create their own media, with both the immediate goal of providing useful sex education to their peers and the longterm goal of providing them with a way to enact change in other areas that are important to them.

Also, check out this awesome video they made to promote the project. (Not sure if it's available to everyone or just select Facebookers, but hopefully you can view it.)

TGIF

This picture represents...maybe half of the tea supply in my suite. We live by the stuff.

Friday Fill-Ins has a first-sentence-of-books theme this week. The first one is the only real answer I know; the rest are made up.

1. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit!!!!"

2. "My tonsils are huge but that ain't no matter."

3. "After dark the rain began to fall again, as per usual in Providence."

4. "Pirates, looking suspiciously Johnny Depp-esque, streamed out from the hold of the Spanish galleon."

5. "There was a hand in the darkness, and suddenly my chicken parm was gone."

6. "Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, so always wear a helmet when riding a bike."

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping, tomorrow my plans include sleeping and Sunday, I want to sleep!

If you haven't before, check out The Low Anthem, an interesting band from good ol' Providence. Rolling Stone calls them "a trio of neo-hippie rockers...the Low Anthem craft homemade, warm-hearted Americana populated by train workers and road trippers on their second album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin." I particularly love their gorgeous, often chill-inducing, harmonies. They're probably the biggest band to come out of Prov in recent times - while they've been popular around here for a while, they seem to have had a sudden rush of fame and have been playing at some of the biggest music festivals in the country. The fun part - not only did they all go to Brown at some point, but I played with Jocie (the trio's only female member, and youngest) in the pit for "Merrily We Roll Along" freshman year! She's such a nice person - I really enjoyed getting to know her - and I'm thrilled that she's making it big, doing what she loves. Brown music concentrators, you too can go far.

TGIF

Happy (belated) St. Joseph's Day! Hope everyone ate lots of delicious zeppole (see above). I know I did. In related news, if you are ever in need of an Italian bakery in Providence, Scialo Bros (on Federal Hill, of course) is pretty fantastic. Nice people, great pastries, frequented by locals.

1. Why do we have to push ourselves so hard, constantly on the move?

2. Tweeting and checking Google Reader are now habits.

3. I have not yet secured a summer internship and it's freaking me out.

4. I had never heard the phrase "Moustache March" and it is not a tradition in which I think many people should participate.
5. I'm staying up late when I shouldn't, the way I always do.

6. How was I to know that I'd get so attached to my spider plants, Aragog and baby Charlotte?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping?, tomorrow my plans include heading up to Boston to visit my brother, and Sunday, I want to see Bill Nye the Science Guy give a lecture at Northeastern!

This music video is great. I feel like these guys are just having a ton of fun. And I can't pretend I don't appreciate the night/knight pun in their name, given my Ellington roots.

This song's for the people who count.

The Saturday Knights - "Count It Off" from Lincoln Leopard Films on Vimeo.

TGIF

This is how I feel about all the work, practicing, and internship applications I have to get done by the coming week.

1. Give me a backrub and I'll be your friend for life.
2. Whenever I post something opinionated online, I get nervous about it. It's a terrible habit and I really should have more confidence in my beliefs and ideas.
3. I wish I were better at staying in touch with my friends who are abroad, and with others whom I have not seen in a long time.
4. Asparagus cooked in olive oil and garlic salt by Masumi was the last thing I ate that was utterly delicious.
5. To live in this world is a blessing, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need fixing.
6. Other than this one, Baird's abroad-in-Copenhagen blog is the last blog I commented on.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to the winter trip with the band - and hanging out with Princeton bandies one last time, tomorrow my plans include more winter trip - and skating in Rockefeller Center and Sunday, I want to perform Albright's Chichester Mass with the choir!

TGIF

1. It seems like there's no hope for humanity when people I thought I respected are able to speak words of ignorance and hate.
2. Wash your hands when you're done, please?
3. If I thought you knew me I'd expect you to know that the Brown Band is my number one priority!
4. The mess you left when you went away (thanks, Alanis) is what I think of most when I think of you.
5. To me, Valentine's Day means sending silly e-cards...and telling loved ones why I love them so much.
6. God - often through the guise of my amazing friends - gives me strength.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to going out for Julia's belated 21st birthday, tomorrow my plans include a visit from my brother, a.k.a. my platonic Valentine, and Sunday, I want to go see Nat's band (the Macrotones) at Johnny D's in Somerville!

Hey, at least I posted more than once this week...sigh.

TGIF

(With apologies to Jezebel.)

Okay, I'm taking a quick break from the New Mexico postings to update on my (current) life. But first, I'd like to introduce a new feature...not only did Lyndsay and Mrs. Mills get me inspired to start blogging (at which I've been doing a terrible job keeping up), but they also got me intrigued by Friday Fill-Ins. So here goes, new feature! This will at least get me to blog once a week, before my weekend starts...

1. Please don't tell me I'm a bad person for being too squeamish to give blood.
2. Can you believe how lovely and peaceful campus is early in the morning?
3. The color orange makes me want to puke!
4. I have a craving for sleep.
5. If my life had a pause button, I'd pause it often, to get caught up on all of my reading. Argh.
6. Eyes are the sleepiest part of me right now.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to going to bed early, tomorrow my plans include Club Gallery and Sunday, I want to go to yoga and then get some work done!

General updates/impressions of the classes I am taking...

Intro. to Gender & Sexuality Studies: Fitting, because it's sort of my concentration. Hah. I love this class, partly because after fulfilling nearly all of the concentration requirements I'm pretty familiar with the concepts we're covering by now, so it's not going to be difficult. And yet - I feel like I'm still learning new things, or at least gaining new insight on old things. Also Denise Davis is awesome and always has hilarious stories about her daughter. As a good friend and classmate pointed out, professors of gender theory always have the most interesting child-rearing practices. As a side note: between this class and the next class I'll discuss, I am reading three volumes of Foucault. The same week as Butler was assigned, too. I'm sorry, but I'm in agreement with Professor Davis - Butler is brilliant, but she needs a good editor.

Religion & Gender in the Ancient Mediterranean: A once-a-week, evening seminar - my only small class this semester, which is a switch from the usual and actually quite a relief. Again, the professor is awesome - she definitely knows her stuff and intimidated me at first, but now that I've gotten to chat with her I've realized that she's a very nice, interesting and interested person. The subject matter is fascinating, because although the gender stuff is old hat, I've never taken a class that focused on the ancient world, and I feel really...academic. In a good way. The other day we looked at the writings of Artimedoros, who was a dream interpreter - the really interesting part is that while he had all of these ideas about the types of predictions you could make through dreams, in doing so he also left us with valuable information about the daily lives of the ancient Greeks, particularly their ideas about gender and sexuality systems. Cool stuff. Also, I was incredibly proud of myself the other day, because I not only spoke up in class (I'm terrible at that - I get intimidated much too easily) but I even argued my point and made a critique of Foucault with which Professor Kraemer totally agreed. Ten points!!

The U.S. Metropolis: An Urban Studies class I decided to take on a whim (and a recommendation from a friend) - and I think I'm going to end up really liking it. Professor Zipp (isn't that a great name?) is a good lecturer, and the TA also gets a mention for being quite adept at facilitating section. The class basically deals with the rise of the American city (and, of course, the suburb) from the postwar era up to today. So far we've had a lot of introductory stuff leading up to this time period - the great black migrations, the Chicago and New York World's Fairs - but I think it's going to be fascinating to trace the history of some of the major social problems that plague our cities. Also there are several films assigned for the class (I'm always tempted to call them "movies", but in college, they're "films"), which always seems to bode well. We already had to watch a funny (in the way that old movies from the 30s are funny) black-and-white propaganda-ish film about the problems with cities, as well as A Raisin in the Sun, which is one of my favorite plays of all time.

The Foundation of Living Systems (a.k.a. Bio 20): Yes, I've gone back on my word - I'm taking a science class after all. But I love it so far - quite honestly, the science nerd inside me (which essentially died during AP chem and physics) is slowly reawakening. It goes without saying that Ken Miller is an awesome and hilarious lecturer.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Kenneth Miller

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

(June 2008)

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Kenneth Miller

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

(January 2006)

In all seriousness, though, I'm 100% on board with everything he says about evolution - particularly because, as a Catholic, he focuses a lot on the fact that evolution and religion are not mutually exclusive. Thank you, Ken Miller, for practicing good science and good theology.

The biggest problem with these classes is that there is a heck of a lot of reading - but that's not really anything new. Otherwise, I'm enjoying being the head conductor of the world's only ice skating band, singing in an incredibly talented church choir with fantastic people from the Providence community, working too many hours at Orwig Music Library (I keep adding shifts - can't keep away!), and living with my amazing suitemates - who happen to be excellent cooks in addition to being spectacular people.