because bilingualism isn't enough...

soooo, since the last time i came on here, some stuff has occurred. i passed stats (i can now officially graduate college tomorrow if i wanted to, good for me). my two best friends moved into my empty room. i got my russian books (wasn't really freaking out about the whole cyrillic alphabet thing until i opened said books, now i am). i have watched an inordinate amount of t.v. and to top it off, i have not worn real clothes for the past month. when i say real clothes, i mean i basically wear the two pairs of pseudo-athletic shorts i own and an assortment of kappa delta tshirts. shameful.

in other news i can't believe 1/3 of my summer school in cville has gone by - i would say it was quick but that would b a lie because really it was quite tedious and useless to go to class every morning. so it was slow in that regard. but i suppose a lot happened over the past 4 weeks, and really if you think about it a majority of my time was devoted to watching reruns of brothers and sisters, boy meets world, and an inexplicable desire to listen to radio songs that i don't even know the names of. and even tho i got a tiny pay increase last year to go from shelving to processing books, i have been relegated to wandering the stacks and getting papercuts in strange places, straining to find slots for the miniscule pamphlets that someone in the u.s. government cared about printing. thanks, america, for printing 54,834,324 versions of some obscure national park in nevada that literally no one will ever check out. but i have to shelve it anyways.

i must say, being in the stacks isn't all that bad. i was beginning to see regulars - well actually just the one person who happened to be at the same carrell every day working on who knows what, but still there was a solidarity in the awkwardness of my rummaging through call numbers (not the dewey decimal system, the weird library of congress filing that uses letters) and reordering shelves. thank goodness, actually, that no one's in the stacks, because i make a lot of inconvenient noise that would interrupt any stereotypical studier. sorry in advance, stack-dwellers.

thank goodness russian starts on monday. it's from 8:30 to 5:30, so there will be significantly less time to shelve my life away, and more time spent actually sitting at one of the desks making strange symbols that translate into a culture that loves vodka, spies, and siberia. my mom, as an ardent polaca, doesn't particularly care for russian as a language. neither did her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents...you get the idea (altho ask my babcia and she'd swear that the ukranians were the worst, hands down). but, i guess if i were born in a country that got partitioned a million times a century, i'd be irritated too. i would really like to go to petersburg though. i like all the old buildings and history.

orientation is tomorrow, so i'm sure that will be interesting. i'll be spending the next 40 weekdays with the same 20 people, for 9 hours a day, so i'm sure we'll all be good friends by the end of it. In the verdadero espiritu de Rusia, here's two Tolstoy quotes i felt were especially poignant.

"Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty year, if you really wish to learn." - Leo Tolstoy

"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence - I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love." - Leo Tolstoy

NoVa has cows too...kinda

In an effort to combat my extreme irritation at youtube failing to load rando videos that I waste a majority of my time watching, I find myself writing this post. I'm home for Memorial Day weekend, in my room, with ridiculously bad internet - thanks to my brother who is playing call of duty online and freezing the router or whatever computer lingo correctly summarizes the decrease in connection bars at the top of my screen.

I have go to say, as much as I dislike the impersonal, overcrowded not-suburbia-not-a-city feel to NoVa, my favorite part of the drive home is hitting 66. Hands down. Cville driving drives me insane. Literally. For one thing, you can't speed - a). because every 5 seconds you hit a light and b). because there is nowhere far enough away to even allow you to accelerate. For another thing, there is something strangely beautiful about traffic. And merging. Not that I particularly enjoy sitting in it, but I do like the idea of collectivity of everyone being in their own little universe (their car). And of course, there is a therapeutic nature to driving that you just can't get in Cville. I also enjoy the much wider variety of license plates and bumper stickers that are up in NoVa. Sorry Cville, although you might be winning on scenery (except go 20 miles on 50 and you can see them in Middleburg). Oh and speaking about aggressive driving, it's Indy 500 Weekend! Bring on the crashes.

So I've been home for about 10 hours, and where's the first place I drove to? Dairy Queen. Some things just never change.

Ok I'm going back to youtube, hopefully the internet cooperates.

The truth about cupcakes

So, if you're following this you know by now that I am not the greatest when it comes to keeping this blog. I try, I really do. And by try I mean that every once in a while I think about the fact that I have said blog and that I don't update it, and this often inspires me to log on and do something about it. The only problem with this logic is that it requires that I actually physically complete the action. And then updating is a fail, per usual.

I was reflecting on the idea of the blog itself and all these internet sites where people can express themselves via autobiographical accounts of what they do, what they think about life. It's an interesting thing. One the one hand, it's kind of fun to put yourself out there in a seemingly anonymous way (altho how many "the internet is not your friend" lectures did i sit through during high school? thanks teej administration, glad to know you care). I even recently, due to the efforts of my best friend, got myself a tumblr. I didn't even know what tumblr was. And now that I have one I must admit it's 1 billion times better than blogging. It requires virtually no effort. Oh you internet enthusiasts, you can check mine out at www.laughingandlavender.tumblr.com.

Perhaps a bit tangential, but has anyone ever noticed that there are an infinite amount of pictures of CUPCAKES in the world? This drives me insane. Since when were cupcakes such a big deal? I literally log onto this newfangled tumblr that I psuedo-understand (figured out how to reblog the pictures, my work is done) and every 4th picture is of cupcakes. It is borderline ridiculous. Cupcakes arranged in geometric formations, cupcakes with all types of icings, cupcakes with weird frosting designs (weirdest I have scene - cupcakes that look like mustaches?). I should start a tumblr just reblogging pictures of cupcakes, then this trend would be more apparent. The other big winner is macarons. Yeah, I didn't know what they were either. Oh and true love being separated by supreme heartache...which actually might be the root cause of the occurrence of cupcakes. Something to ponder.

So now that I have expressed my deepest, most perplexing thoughts about the internet, I hereby emphasize my point of why I don't blog that often. Just look what comes out! A rant about people blogging about baked goods. Oh the facets of my mind.

In other news about my life, I'm in Cville until August - which is how I have so much time to be bombarded by confectionary creations and update this electronic gem of a blog. My stats class might be the most monotonous, least intellectually stimulating thing I've done in a while - but it is entertaining. Some of the mathematical incompetence is just genius. I, in true Stueben form, laugh unabated. Good times.

It has been fun to see pictures of all the people who went to beachweek from UVA, and although I didn't go it does bring back memories of beachweek 2009 in Corolla at the Multiculturalism House. Quite an experience, not sure is the strangeness and epicness can ever be replicated and subsequently surpassed.

I bought a pair of athletic shoes. Yes. This actually happened. And I wear them in all their white and blue glory (it's nice to have two feet again, that boot was the worst thing ever).

Ok, now even I am getting bored writing about my life so I am gonna wrap it up for now. And remember, think twice next time before you buy cupcakes. I hear the cake market could really use a boost.

For my Philly friends

If you went on the CSM Philly trip with me, and somehow found my blog, this post is for you. Fuego and sea-themed cards (especially the christmas tree worm), that is all. :)

Happy Wednesday!

Actually, Wednesday's are pretty mundane, but still I suppose today is worthy of a post...

First of all, I would just like to let everyone know that the rodent problem has been rectified. After barricading myself in the front 2 rooms of my apartment for 3 days, I finally asked my neighbor to come and handle the situation for me. I essentially locked him in the barricaded rooms, shut the door, and crossed my fingers it was dead. Lucky me, because the rodent was very dead. I tend to imagine (even though I refused to actually go in and look at the carcass) that it wasn't a pleasant end. They set up glue traps, so when this rodent (which was a mouse) first got stuck in the glue, it was only part of it's body... in it's last moments it dragged itself and the trap across my kitchen floor. Kinda sad, even for a rodent. My neighbor threw it out and I then spent the next 5 hours sanitizing and washing all the floors in my apartment. Everything is back to normal now.

I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon reading tjbash, which was just generally hilarious. I hadn't been on that site in a very long time...now that I've viewed it I should be set for the next 3 years bahaha. www.tjbash.org

I felt this quote was worthy of posting in that Brinda has a physics test tomorrow she is freaking out about and this appropriately sums up my sentiments. Leave it to Doc Walk to add hilarity to my day.

// Semester Exam review
Dr. Walker: The semester exam is next... Tuesday. Anybody have anything they have questions about? Something you've been struggling with for the past few months? Anything?
John Jaskot: Physics.

My mom sent me an e-mail this morning that said Mother Teresa was made a saint last night in Rome (well I suppose Vatican City) at 11 pm, which is pretty awesome news.

Otherwise, my paper is still nonexistent, words with friends is improving, the weather is seriously unfortunate, and my feet are cold. Pretty typical day.

Hello, first floor clemons

At the request of my good friend Sarah, who just saved my blog to her favorites, I have opted to update more frequently. As in now. And presumably in the very near future.

So here I am, currently sitting on the rather dull and dirty first floor of club clem, home to groups of people looking stressed and eating awkwardly so as to not make a lot of noise. It actually is quite comical to watch how unhappy everyone looks with their headphones and srat cups littered among the open macbooks. Oh clemons.

So I am here...not because I particularly like this library...I'm an aldie fan, hands down...but because alderman after 8 pm kinda creeps me out and i don't do clark. So I'm in clem with my freshly checked out textbooks about the Italian Risorgimento and Otto von Bismarck trying to come up with an essay topic for my paper that is due in about 72 hours... 50% of my final grade ftw.

So far this is what I have learned that may or may not be useful: Cavour was a badass, but Bismarck was even more of a badass (I am an expert on how to be a badass, I read blogs about it and everything... if you don't get this joke don't worry it's not directed at you). Sardinia was pretty important. Napoleon III pretty much allowed Italy to unify under the premise of crushing Austria. And there we have it. Months of sitting in a class about the evolution of Europe and that's all I've gotten about Italian Unification. Obviously I make excellent use of my time.

Words with friends update: I have lost every single game I have played, with the exception of 1. I declined it by accident, so I technically didn't lose it. But no worries, folks, I'm making progress...I think a win may be in sight in the near future. Although I don't want to speak too soon.

In the spirit of procrastination (and the recent realization that I really should know more random trivia), here are a few pieces of info to expand your horizons and brighten your day:

- Hippo milk is pink.

- More than 10 people a year are killed by vending machines.

- You can overdose on caffeine (this does not bode well for me).

- The warmest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed this, Sarah.

An unfortunate occurrence

Dear Friends,

So looking at my blogger history (full of unfinished thoughts, random anecdotes, and large lapses in posts) I am making an entry today to document the unfortunate incidents of the past 24 hours.

Namely, one incident.

There is a rodent trapped in my kitchen. Yes. It's in there. Well actually it's more like...contained in half the apartment (kitchen and empty room) - I closed the door to that side of it and stuffed rags under the gap so hopefully it does not burrow through. How it got in I have no idea. How long it's been here, I also have no idea. Don't really want to contemplate that one. All I know is that it is large, brown, fat, ugly, and has a tail. It is also apparently pretty stupid.

So now what do I do you might ask? After rapid iphone communication with my Dad, a newcomer to the world of technology, I have learned that no one is going to swoop in and hoist it out or shoot it on spot. No. Apparently they will set traps - and apparently the types of traps they set are important. After a mild freakout and sleeping in my uggs (I cannot access my rain boots because they are in the kitchen, fail) in case the situation necessitated a speedy exit, it is safe to say I have survived the night.

Now they come to set traps and the rodent (who I have designated as a "he") will hopefully die in a trap on my vinyl kitchen floor until I have the courage to go in and check, at which point I will have to wait until someone comes to dispose of it. Classy.

It really is unfortunate that I'm not on Spring Break at the convent right now so that I could freak out with my roommates and Fr. Stephen could deal with it for me. But seriously, I miss you all. I got words with friends, my username is impish nomad. Add me.

So yeah. Guess I won't be eating this week. Wait STOP is this for real? There is an app called chess with friends??? Ok I'm going to go download that and then go see my apartment people. I will keep you posted on the...developing situation.

Besos, lex