I tried, I swear!

I was really going to cook last night. I had plans and everything.

See, several months ago, O.'s mother gave me a cookbook called Fat Free, Flavor Full, which led to the following exchange:

Me: Is your mother saying I'm fat?
O.: I told her I was going to get in trouble for this.

Anyway, I've made a few soups from it, but there was a recipe for an eggplant, bean and tomato casserole that looked like it could be really good, but also potentially disgusting. I bought a couple of eggplants at the food co-op over a week ago and had been putting off the actual cooking part ever since.

So, O., who had expressed a decided lack of enthusiasm for this particular recipe, had plans last night, so I thought it would be a great time to try it. I called Tracy and Jackie to invite them to dinner, figuring that if I had guests coming I'd have to actually cook something. They both accepted, though upon hearing the menu, Jackie said "...I'll stop at Chipotle on the way over."

So I was ready to go. I put my beans on the stove to cook and started cutting up my onion.

Hmm. Tracy's allergic to onion.

Well, she's ok as long as there's not much and it's cooked, so we should be all right. Next ingredient! Garlic.

Hmm. Tracy's allergic to garlic.

Ok. We'll leave the garlic out. Next ingredient! Green pepper.

Hmm. I know I had a green pepper around here somewhere...

I called O. He told me that he'd tossed the green pepper three days ago because it liquefied in the bag. Hmm. Perhaps I procrastinated too much?

...Sigh. Plan B.

So I intended to really cook, but instead made Chicken Tikka Masala from a jar. Is it any wonder I don't bother most days? Thank God O. does most of the cooking around here.

Back to school...

Frankly, I'm too exhausted to write anything of substance right now. So instead, I'm posting pictures.

In case you ever wondered where I work:


This is the reading circle, the picture book section and our brand new mural.


This is the other side of the library, and the other new mural. In the back we have the fiction section, and to the right part of the nonfiction section.

And to toot my own horn a bit, here are some of the displays I put together this year.


This is the bulletin board right outside the library, where my students can record the books they're reading.


And this one is also in the hall. The words read "Read a book...meet interesting people!" Can you name them all?

What I did on my summer vacation.

First, I went here:


Then I went here:


Now I have to go back here:


Don't get me wrong, I love my job. But I would also dearly love to have another week or so of summer.

Paris for President?

It would be an understatement to say that I am no fan of Paris Hilton. So when I heard about her spoof campaign ad, I was prepared to be annoyed and unamused.

Instead, I found it hilarious.

I mean, there were parts I found annoying and unfunny. It is Paris Hilton, after all. But mostly I just laughed.

I am a little concerned about the fact that her energy plan seems to make a lot of sense...

Obsessive Geekdom

It's not that I'm obsessive. It's just--

Oh, who the hell do I think I'm kidding. I'm obsessive. And more than that, I'm a geek. Oh, don't get me wrong--I fly under the radar, for the most part. And given the company I keep, I'd say I fall on the mild end of the geek scale. But I can identify the episode of Star Trek by watching about three minutes, I know why the meaning of life is 42*, and I've long since stopped arguing over whether or not I really need to wear medieval garb to the various events that O. takes me to.

And I would totally walk through an alien device that generates a stable wormhole to a city in another galaxy, and I would live in that city regardless of the fact that said galaxy is overrun with life-sucking space vampires and evil killer robots.

See? Geek.

O. has said on more than one occasion that he feels like he was born in the wrong time, like he really would have fit better in centuries past. I feel the same way, but I feel like I should have been born in the future. The idea of aliens fascinates me. The idea of traveling in space fascinates me. The concept of setting up a colony on another planet fascinates me. I think this is one reason that I'm such a sucker for science fiction--I feel like there's so much potential out there, and it kills me that we don't know more about it.

I've been weeding the astronomy section of the library where I'm doing my practicum, and there are a ton of outdated books. Many of them were written in the 60s and 70s and had these awesome predictions for where we'd be by now--setting up colonies on the moon, space tourism within reach of the average person--but I doubt any of this will happen in my lifetime. I want my flying car, damnit.

All of this is a very convoluted way of saying, if you're trying to get ahold of me this week and cannot, blame the fact that my Stargate: Atlantis Season 4 DVDs arrived recently, and I'm currently engrossed in a marathon. What can I say--I'm obsessive.

*Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Don't forget your towel.

A Word to the Wise (Part VII)

Even though you think it's silly to take the elevator down one floor at the Wheaton Metro station parking garage--especially since the stairs are right there--do it anyway. Those puddles on the steps? Not water.

Sanctioned Avoidance

I am an avoider. When faced with an unpleasant task, I generally do whatever I can to weasel out of it. My comprehensive exams--the culmination of my Masters degree and the major hurdle toward graduation--were scheduled for next Friday, the 18th, and they definitely fall in the unpleasant task column. I don't feel particularly prepared, which is totally my fault since I've barely cracked a book. But I had a detailed study plan laid out for the next two weeks to get myself ready. This did not stop me from considering rescheduling to take them in the fall. In fact, I quite sternly talked myself out of rescheduling them, because I thought that was taking my weaseling tendencies a bit too far.

Well, today I learned that it's out of my hands, and I must take comps in the fall; it has to do with a technical matter regarding my practicum and the requirement that I take comps my last semester.

This is awesome.

Catholic University is doing my weaseling for me.

And, I have a second chance to get the studying part right. Which means I have to work on my tendency for procrastination...