Fruit

I had a long conversation about fruit vs vegetables the other day. Not much was decided, as the general consensus was that we really knew very little about plant ovaries or tubers. But that got me to thinking about fruit. I like fruit. A lot. It's yummy. But there's always something left behind, some annoying little garbage to make the fruit not quite as portable. Apples have the core, oranges and bananas have big peels, grapes have the stem things. I mean, I love to eat fruit, but you always need a trash can around to fully enjoy them.

I have no friends, only people who dislike me less. ~Rich


This room is for the birds!! ~ Maxine DeBryn


We fought to the death, and I won. ~Ryan

My new "thing"

In my personal philosophy, I hate labels. They are so often not true, they uphold stereotypes, they put people unnecessarily into boxes, they hold down true personalities. But frequently they can be helpful in sorting people, creating groups, or making the world a more organized place. I've been contemplating a "label shirt" a lot lately. A shirt that just has a blunt statement of a label you have applied to yourself. For instance:
My sister Julie could get a shirt that says, "I'm scared of puppets." This one isn't all that funny on its own, yet imagine that one Julie. Funny.
Name shirts are good, especially when used in a theatrical setting. I'm in this new piece, it's kinda creepy and about some (perhaps drug-induced) dream with flying angels and angry mobs. At one point we are all standing in a line, and everyone but the back person suddenly falls down. In that moment, I would love to see him standing there confidently, doing nothing but proudly presenting his shirt that says simply, "Jake." His entire persona would be perfectly represented.
There are some other labels that can be amusing, like "nerd" (or "I have 3 majors") and the house favorite, "Curve-killer" (because we aren't especially buxom and tend to ruin the grading scale with high exam scores). A black shirt with black writing (it would have to be viewed in the right light) that said "Goth" would be amusing. Or a shirt with your nickname on it. That would be especially funny if you had an especially amusing nickname, like "Captian Viscosity" (I won't explain that one, but it's funny). I'm trying to get shirts made that say "I live at the Dow" for the athletes and dancers who spend all our time in the athletic building. Or a shirt that says "I survived Organic Chemistry" for the chem geeks, or "I had *insert name of infamously hard professor here*."
For some reason, these shirts are a very funny idea to me lately. Everything that happens I seem to find a funny label shirt to apply to it. Send in your ideas.

:-)

Beautiful

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~e.e. cummings

So much for Michigan

I love winter. It is my favorite season. Cozy sweaters, hot chocolate, sparkly snow, sledding, a fire in the fireplace. I love trudging through 2 feet of snow to get to class, I love wearing a huge coat with matching gloves/scarf/hat set. I love it when your wet hair freezes by the time you get to class, or when you can't get your ID out of your pocket to get into a building because your fingers are numb. I love watching the snow fall outside the window, snuggling up under a mound of blankets. I love when the sun makes the snow into a million tiny diamonds that sparkle and glitter all day. I love having the excuse of "I couldn't dig myself out" to get me out of stuff I need to drive to.
Winter has apparently decided to take a vacation this year. I thought we had global warming beat with the weather here in November, it was super cold with tons of snow. But then when winter was supposed to be getting into full gear, when you start making jokes about not being warm until July, and not seeing the grass until June and all that, it melted. No snow. Warm temperatures. Rain. Can you believe it? Rain. In December. And then more in January. Instead of my winter wonderland, snow sparkling under the frozen sun, I have crap-ville. The ground is all muddy and yucky, the grass is dead but not really gone, the sky is all poopy looking, the wind can't decide whether to be cold or to be warm. I'm stubbornly wearing my down jacket still, though it was 55 degrees with blinding sunshine today. Not a cloud in the sky. That's like 60 degrees higher than it should be right now.
Why am I going to school in Michigan if it's not even going to snow? I might as well be in California waiting to fall into the ocean.

More updates

So, I was supposed to update more about what happened to me over break. Now that I'm not home any more, the stories don't sound quite as funny...

The kiddos in my house are super cute. Sam loves to run and bang on stuff, play the piano and put his socks on his hands like puppets. Anna is the cooing queen, laying on her throne of pink blankets and smiling all day long.










I saw my few friends from home once or twice. Rich and I got coffee, and had a great conversation about how his neck is sore from lifting carpet at his job. He seemed to be doing well, despite the pulled muscles and caffine addiction aquired along with the carpet lifting. Danielle and company were fun to hang with, we actually went to a bar. Nobody really drank, as we all had to drive home, but we had an enjoyable night icing out the boys who thought 5 girls out on a weeknight would be fun to pick up. That was about it for socializing in Madison, unless you count the evenings spent alone reading the newspaper over a sundae at Michaels. At least I was out of the house.

My mother and sister got me to go on many crazy errands. They dragged me to the mall and the grocery store all in one day. Mom and I went shopping for various other things, as well, still not my favorite thing. I got out of it with tons of yummy food and a very nice cashmere/angora sweater, but the emotional cost was almost not worth it. It was nice to spend some time with the Grahmann girls, especially when we had all three generations along (and the little on is just so cute, she makes even the mall bearable).

I made baby blankets for the two unborn Grahmann boys, and their parents liked them very much. I'm about half done with Michael's blanket, which is turning out great. I'm still stuck in a rut with Kathleen's, though, it's not especially exciting or personal in design, so I may start that one again.

My family spent a wonderful holiday all crammed in my cozy home. We played Hoopla, my favorite game lately, a version of Cranium where everyone is on the same team. I guess we won, though there was no one to beat. We also had a great night of other group games with my sibling's friends. We ate tons, laughed tons, and had a very nice time being ourselves. We've been working on not fitting back into old family stereotypes (Julie the uptight older sister, the boys the oblivious ones, me the scared little kid), and I think we did rather well. I felt more included, Julie was much more calm, Mom and Dad seemed to enjoy the time better than in recent years, and Alex and Steven made us all fit together. It was really nice.

I got some great stuff for Christmas, including laser hair removal (which will actually be many a Christmas worth of presents, as it is very expensive). I got my first treatment, and it didn't hurt at all, despite the dire warnings of my sister. I also got some great pajamas, lots of iTunes money, and a wonderful ballerina sock puppet.

The GRE is in a week, so I better get back to studying. Did you know that the square of the length of a box's diagonal is equal to the sum of the squares of its length, height, and width? Don't care? Neither do I.