a list

1. Long time no type. Buried in schoolwork and life. Not necessarily in that order. Attempting to force myself to come up for air.

2. Chemistry is hard. Like, fail-out-of-class hard. (Not me, but you know what I mean.) I knew there was a good reason to fear it back at Penn State! Anyway, I’m doing alright, but a recent bombed quiz has shown me I need to devote more time to Chem and less to Anatomy.

3. In all my busy-ness today, I decided I needed to make bread. That’s so like me. Why? I had to “revive” my starter that’s in the fridge. And have I forgotten about the GAJILLION things of bread we brought home from our Thanksgiving trip? (No fewer than 1.5 loaves of rye bread, 10 bagels, 8 onion rolls, plus crackers.) Our house is carb central!

4. My Thanksgiving pumpkin pie was the ugliest thing ever (thanks to my impatience with store-bought crust), but tasted great. Get the recipe here.

5. Speaking of recipes–I just managed another blog post for the co-op. It’s about cranberries and I included the cranberry brisket Andrew loves so much. Read it here.

6. I am now “officially” a New Yorker; I took care of getting a new license and registering the car. License should be here in about a week! It’s kind of exciting, in a really anti-climactic sort of way. I think if we’d moved into a house we were excited about, everything would feel different. Instead, everything still feels very temporary. But, nonetheless, it’s still neat to see the Pilot with its new yellow and blue license plate.

7. We named our plants. Well, I named our plants. Andrew just went along with it good-naturedly. My dear friend, Emily, inspired me. She has such beautiful, healthy, vibrant house plants. I am so jealous. She and I recently traded some plant clippings and she mentioned one of them was named ‘Stella.’ Now, I’ve heard of people naming their plants before, but I just never have. I mean, mine don’t normally last that long…it was never a good idea to get attached. However, I do have one that has lasted FOUR years now! Andrew and I were in disbelief when we realized it. So, on the way home from our Thanksgiving holiday, I used my phone to look up names and their meanings (again, such a ‘me’ thing to do–we’re talking the significance of the names of HOUSE PLANTS) and we decided to call the big, four-year-old one “Gerard” which means ‘hardy.’ (We’ve been calling it ‘hardy’ since I hadn’t killed it yet, so we figured why not?). I have one other plant, an orchid Andrew bravely got me for Valentine’s Day this year. (I don’t know what he was thinking.) Anyway, it did alright for awhile, then the blooms fell off, then I panicked until I found out that was normal, and just when it was growing another stem and bloom, one of the movers bumped into it on our table and broke it off! I was heartbroken. I looked up ‘long-suffering’ and ended up with “Patience.” She’s been through a lot, that one, and just the other day I noticed a tiny bud getting ready to sprout from the moss–hurray! And now, I have Emily’s purple one to re-pot, who I have been calling “Stella 2.” Between the animals and now anthropomorphic plants, we have one full house!

8. I’m supposed to be working on psychology homework. Must hurry!

9. Hadrian has been down for the count all day today–GLORIOUS! I’ve been so productive. (In case you’re wondering, any time he returns from ‘puppy camp’ he sleeps 24/7 for about two days. Totally normal.)

10. We have 7 pints of ice cream in our freezer, plus the remnants of two Jeni’s that Emily and Dan brought us, plus a tiny bit of homemade Jeni’s vanilla. SEVEN unopened Graeter’s and Jeni’s pints. That’s like $45 in ice cream (hey, don’t judge my expensive taste in ice cream!). My brilliant plan: tiny scoops, both to make it last and keep it off my hips. I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’m not terribly optimistic…

a (quick!) list

1. I wanted to go to the gym. I haven’t worked out since Wednesday (unless you count packing, loading and unloading a car a million times).

2. Some people use a workout to de-stress. Sometimes I do, too. Unfortunately, the biggest cause of my stress is my looming Chemistry quiz.

3. While I’d love to hit the gym and study my chem notes on the elliptical (yay for killing two birds with one stone!), the actual trip/time involved at the gym would stress me out MORE. So, I’m about to take my Chemistry quiz (relatively) unprepared to get it over with.

4. I made my first cup of coffee in the house this morning. It was somewhat anticlimactic; the only Keurig pods we have are a coffee variety I’m not a huge fan of and I haven’t found the mugs I wanted to use yet. But nothing beats staying in one’s pj’s!

5. Hadrian is sleeping on his bed next to me and his tummy is making the LOUDEST noises.

6. We got A LOT of the kitchen done last night, but there is still more to go. I ended up unpacking our white dishes and some of my oldest green ones, but left all my “favorites” (some colorful Goodwill finds and all my fun mugs) packed away. I think I’m one of those “delay gratification” people… I’d rather get by with the minimum/boring stuff and have something to look forward to when we find our “real” house. Note: We haven’t found A SINGLE THING broken (ok, I did find one decorative plate broken, but it was one I packed in a Rubbermaid bin that they didn’t repack and it’s so not a big deal)! Go Moog for hiring awesome movers!

7. That, and I intend to get rid of some of the “boring” stuff (hello white baking dishes we got for our wedding that I barely use because I have a gazillion other ones…) before the next move.

8. I made room for the most important stuff (bakeware) and have set up shelving in the basement with all my appliances, but have almost NO. ROOM. FOR. ACTUAL. FOOD. Seriously. And I didn’t realize how much food (just to clarify, when I say “food,” I don’t mean boxes of mac n’ cheese and cans and the like. I mean all my Tupperware Modular Mates with different grains and flours and granolas and cereals….) I USED TO KEEP in my pantry in Ohio. I mean, I used to have three kinds of oatmeal alone! I emptied out what I could before we moved, cleaned the containers and had the movers pack them up. Now, I have THREE giant boxes of empty Tupperware, and I don’t even have room for what little Tupperware I brought to the hotel! Ack! What is a girl to do?

9. My first thought was to set up shelving in the basement and put all my Tupperware things there. And then I realized I’d have to walk down to the basement and truck all the ingredients for EVERY meal up EVERY time. Not practical. Next plan?

10. This list was not short or quick. The sun is up. I got sucked into blogging and haven’t started the dreaded Chemistry quiz. Story of my life.

Wish me luck! I’m hoping to reward myself with a mid-morning run/trip to the gym and a Target-date (um, we need EVERYTHING) with the hubby 🙂

burnin’ ink

I ran out of ink today. Blue ink.

I like to use blue ink to write on handouts that a few of my teachers (graciously!) provide. I find the blue stands out better against the black printing (duh) and makes it so much easier to read and study.

Anyway, there I was, nearing the end of Chemistry and my writing slowly began to fade. It faded and faded until it just about died.

I wasn’t surprised. While this was the first time in class that I’ve run out of ink, it is not the first time this semester. Or the second. Or the third.

Five pens. I’ve gone through FIVE pens this semester so far, and we aren’t even half-way through. No matter about tuition; it will be the cost of INK that will eat us out of house and home (or hotel) before I’m finished with school!

In their defense, I do take a lot of notes. But still–five? In as many weeks?

Yikes. I do believe they sell refills for this particular brand (my ultimate fave), so I’ve saved the empties.

Only two pens left before I run out!