Am I writing a paper? No, I'm having an adventure.

Hello (un)faithful followers!

I have an anecdote that is noteworthy, involving my favorite place in Washington D.C., Georgetown University. Yes, the point has been made to me that I do not actually attend this establishment of higher learning, but when has that ever stopped me?

On Thursday I had two exams, and a paper due the next day. This paper required me to analyze 2 rather obscure sonnets that Lorca wrote in the last years of his life. Luckily, there is a book out there that helps with all the mythological references and seemingly random imagery - but alas it was checked out of Alderman. Folks, I NEEDED this book. It was imperative. So after a frantic google search, I learned that William and Mary, Washington and Lee, Georgetown, and the Library of Congress had copies. So I made the executive decision to drive to DC to get those 12 pages.

I made it downtown at about 7:30 pm, and tried to park on campus. This was an unintelligent move on my part, because there is literally no parking. So after being laughed at by the security guard who watched me drive in and drive out (she was literally like, honey I knew you wouldn't find anything), I attempted to park in what looked like a parking garage.

WRONG. It was a parking garage for buses because just as I tried to pull in a huge door opened and a bus drove out. So now I had caused this traffic jam. The bus driver called to me and asked if I was lost - I said I was looking for the parking garage. She told me where to go and essentially stopped traffic so I could awkwardly back out. Thanks Georgetown transit lady.

Finally I made it to the garage! But then the attendant in the security kiosk didn't want to let me in. She says: There is no overnight parking. I, in a desperate manner, try to explain that I don't want to park there overnight. I just want to park there an hour so I can photocopy 12 pages of literary analysis so that I can write a paper. I even showed her my envelope with the call number I frantically scribbled before I left my apartment. She was tentatively convinced, and told me I had one hour.

So I managed to park. I then attempted to find the library. I knew where it was in theory - it's the really ugly building on their main quad next to Healey Hall. I knew I had to go up - I just wasn't really sure where because they have a lot of construction and paths are blocked. So I ended up in front of the business school where these 3 asian guys were smoking. I was like, "Excuse me, where is the library?" They had no idea. They were like, on the other side of the campus. They gave no explicit instructions. So, still confused, I continued on my way until I ran into these four REALLY tall guys. I asked them where the library was, and seeing my confusion they walked me there. Thanks really nice, tall boys.

So I had arrived at the library. Success! Except the Georgetown library has a security guard and you have to swipe in with something called a GO-Card. I explained to the woman that I was not a Georgetown student, I go to UVA. I showed her my student ID. I desperately explained (using the envelope with the call number) that I just wanted to copy these 12 pages. She asked for my student ID, my drivers license, and took down all my info. By the time she finished documenting my presence there were like 20 people waiting to swipe into the library. Way to cause problems, Lexi.

But yes, I had made it. There I was, in the cradle of knowledge of my favorite school, despite its incredibly ugly facade. I took a moment to basque in the moment, and then I made my way to find the book. I found it. It was a magical moment. I cried on the inside. But then a problem presented itself - how will I made photocopies if I don't have this GO-Card. I went downstairs and was confused for a while, until some boy took pity on me and was like - you just insert change/dollar bills here. While I was slightly embarrassed that I showed such incompetence at my favorite school, this was a ephemeral thought and I was overcome by elation coupled with supreme stress. I photocopied my pages, said goodbye to the security desk woman - she inquired as to where I had obtained the goal of my quest. I showed her the pages. I left the parking garage (notice that I did not stay overnight, as I promised) and drove home.

I was supposed to get on the Key Bridge, but per usual got lost and so ended up passing the Kennedy Center, the ugliest building in Washington DC. I mean it seriously aesthetically displeasing. But I made it home, pages in hand, and I wrote that paper furiously.

What is the moral of this story, you might ask? Well there are a few. 1). Don't trust the Alderman recall system, because chances are if you really need the book the person won't return it. 2). It was probably a bad idea to wait so long to start, but I needed that book, and Alderman failed me. 3). Georgetown University just reaffirmed itself as my favorite school - it solves all problems.

So there you have it. Yes, I finished the paper. Yes, I clearly love Georgetown in a questionably unhealthy way. Yes, I am sleep deprived and possibly certifiably crazy because of finals. But my friends, for one hour of my college career I was a Georgetown Student, which is ironic that it happened in the week of my birthday. But that, too, is a long story. For now I will just say thank you ugly library, and Hoya Saxa.

hey, did you know there's a country called bhutan?

hello friends.

today an exciting thing happened. mr. andrew and i conquered the second grade. sort of. we...did not get conquered by the second grade, so in my book that is a victory. we made christmas tree ornaments and talked about candy canes.

as per usual, the primary reason i'm making this post is because..gasp..i have a spanish paper that i reallllllly don't want to write. i literally have done nothing else but work on this thing, and it still is an incoherent ramble of a draft/outline. i, in true grace fashion, am blaming the feminists. and maybe i'll just throw in technological determinism for kicks. yeah i don't know what that means either.

here's a thought - in my free time (i have a lot due to the procrastination) i have memorized the location and names of all 196 countries in the world. every single one. from kyrgyzstan to nauru to burkina faso to burundi to grenada. if you google sporcle countries of the world you should find it. even my brother nick only got a 173/196, and he has a photographic memory so it's like perpetual cheating. no, my perfect score was earned through a copious amount of wasted time and dedicated keyboard typing. oh the benefits of being under-motivated.

ok, not to harp, but this essay is really a downer. the boredom of calderon is almost as depressing as the actual depression of lorca in poeta en nueva york. read a translation if you haven't. oh also lorca was a homosexual. apparently so was walt whitman. and lorca was murdered by a firing squad outside Granada in 1936. i've been told i should have known this, i sat in the class for 4 months, but hey. living obliviously is an art form.

i have a strange desire to eat cheese. alas, i don't have any. but, this does remind me of cows, which suffices.

well it's 11:44, and this paper on what la tragedia calderoniana can tell us about the role of women in the spanish golden age remains unwritten. it beckons, calling "12 pages, 48 hours."

but, as a last statement, shout out to big fish if you clicked on the link and actually made it through an entire post. you made my day, even though i don't know it.

From Shakespeare to Oscar

I wanted to take a moment to recall something that happened...6 years ago. Brinda and I had to act out the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. For reference of this, B, check your email again. I mention this because it is almost absurd to think of all the stuff that has happened in between then and now. I know your week is horrendous B, but I love you as much as an entire herd of moose (do they have herds, who knows???) loves Canada. That's a lot of love.

Once upon a time, in 2005, I went to bed at 10 p.m. This worked out well for me, until I stopped and life has been a downward trend since.

Today was, in fact, a revolutionary day in that my boss at Aldie shared that we FINALLY, after 2 years, got new stamps that no longer require me to fidget with the shipping list numbers! As a result I processed 3x my normal amount. Success.

Dorothy's last name from the Wizard of Oz is Gale. How hilarious, because of it's correlation to the wind! Thanks C.R. for this fact, even though you will never read this and probably have no idea that I even have a blog.

I thought I'd end with a quote from the one and only Oscar Wilde, "It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information." Happy med school library studying.

Thoughts about Russian

russian. is. hard.

like, really hard.

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.