Life in Denim and Flip Flops

These last 2 weeks I have been having the weirdest dreams. I've been really stressed out. And when I get stressed out, I tend to have really vivid dreams. Sometimes they'll be nightmares, but mostly they're just odd. This week they were all education themed. One night I dreamt I was back in sixth grade science class. We were dissecting frogs (an experiment I did not enjoy the first time), and somehow I was the kid with the scalpel. Of course it wasn't just not knowing what I was doing, but there was of course the entire class egging me on and pushing me to get it done. I end up panicking and waking up about 2am. The next night it was my calculus classroom, same situation. I'm at the board trying to do a calculation in gibberish, being harassed by my classmates. The rest of the week is was the same idea: English class where I hadn't read the book, Spanish class where I'm pretty sure everyone was speaking German, choir where the music is in the wrong clef, etc...

Is it a bad sign that I'm contemplating going to bed and it's only 8:30 on a Friday night? What a sad life I lead at the beginning of the semester! However, I've survived the worst of it. Three weeks of virtual insanity with teaching schedules is over and now it slows down for 2 weeks! Yay! I'll have other responibilities to attend to at work, but the hectic teaching load is past. I'm really looking forward to catching up on sleep tonight and getting some non-work and work stuff accomplished tomorrow. The proposal for a conference presentation I hoped to submit is due Monday, which means... back to the library to work on it tomorrow. I could be lazy and work on it from home, but we all know how not productive I am from home. There was a reason I did all my best coursework in the library in both college and grad school :) So, until tomorrow. I bid you all good evening.

So every year the library hosts a Faculty Publications and Creativity Reception, where we recognize faculty members' contributions outside the classroom. This year I've got the book chapter which is finally in print!! (Hallelujah!) I've also decided/been convinced to put some of my photography out. Only problem is I need a name for the pieces. That's where you come in! I'm looking for suggestions. I need the name by 5pm Wednesday. If you've got an idea, leave it in the comments. I'll change the comment requirements so you can be anonymous if you want (of if you don't have a google account to sign into!) Here they are: One is a picture of a flower (whose name I don't know) at the arboretum this summer. Imagine it rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. (I can't figure out why it keeps loading sideways!!) The other is a shot of Lake Mendota in Madison this fall. UPDATE: My mom gave me some great ideas that I decided to run with. So top photo is now ...

This is harder than it looks. Try answering the following questions with only one word. And yes, I can actually say that little :) I got this from Gretchen in an email this week. I decided to do it this way instead of emailing it back. Enjoy. Feel free to steal it and re-post it yourself. Where is your cell phone? table Significant other? non-existant What’s your hair like? new Your mother? BFF Your father? inspirational Your favorite thing? stories Your dream last night? odd Your favorite drink? caffeinated Which room are you in? front Your hobby? photography Your fear? irrelevancy Where do you want to be in 6 years? happy Where were you last night? couch Something that you aren't? neat Muffins? Perkins! Wish list item? iphone Last thing you did? homework What are you wearing? casual TV? DVR Your pets? nope Friends? forever Your life? busy Your mood? content Missing someone? roomies Drinking? rum :) Your car? icy Something you're not wearing? shoes Your favorite stor...

I survived week 2 of the semester. It's been a lot bit crazy, but week 2 is officially in the books. School canceled early due to ice, walking to work, a few technical mishaps, and some fabulous crockpot texmex chicken were the highlights (and lowlights). Mom and Dad stopped by on their way to Grandma's for lunch today. It was nice to get off campus for a while. I'm still a bit behind so I'll be headed back to campus tomorrow to get more accomplished, but I'm taking tonight off from work thought. I've caught up on tv, watched some live Australian open tennis, and maybe I'll read a little before I head off to bed. I definitely need the rest after a long weekend last weekend and not so much sleep this week :)

What's your policy on adding new tv shows to your schedule mid-season? Usually by January I've abandoned a few shows, sometimes fall premieres, sometimes old favorites gone stale. So that makes me feel better about picking up new shows. This year I haven't abandoned anything yet. Which presents a problem as I've let my coworkers talk me into 2 shows. Plus, I'm pretty excited about Life Unexpected and The Deep End. Oh, and White Collar and Psych are back. Shoot. I think I'm going to have to DVR a bunch of this stuff and watch it on the 2 days I have nothing on. Anything new you're looking forward to? I'm really stoked to watch the Olympics too! Last year I didn't have too many shows, and all of a sudden I've started watching like 6 new shows since June. No wonder my DVR has been working overtime. :)

Super excited about it. This is the first time I've ever colored my hair. Even though it's not really coloring it. (She just put some bleach on a few pieces to lighten it up, no added color.) Now the real trick is seeing what I can do with it when left to my own devices :)

When I was in grad school I did a lot of cooking on weekends. My weekday evenings were usually busy with class, homework, or applying for jobs. (Or conversely, vegging in front of the tv because I'd spent the rest of the day doing the previously mentioned things.) Point was I didn't do too much heavy-duty cooking on weeknights. I did a fair amount of cooking though. I brought my lunch Monday-Friday. Dinner one night a week was eating out with Emily, and the last semester a second was usually takeout at education library where we camped out writing cover letters and job apps galore. But the rest I usually made myself. You can ask Amy about this, but while I was the more adventurous eater, she was the more adventurous cook. I had my standard standby recipes that would feed me for a few days during the week. These were those recipes I knew off the top of my head: quiche, stirfry, enchilada/black bean casserole, chicken and mushrooms, homemade pizza, mashed potatoes, and applesauce...

just one click at a time. I had a totally different blog post planned for tonight, but after seeing Shawn's Open Letter to YouTube. I don't know if you've seen any of Shawn's Uncultured Project videos, but he's done some amazing things. John and Hank Green collected money for him on the Tour de Nerdfighting. Shawn took that money to Bangladesh and built a pond-sand filter for clean drinking water. He made a video of the results, but be forewarned, it made be cry. He believes that we can make a difference in combating global poverty. But he's not done just yet, he's trying to get a seat at the table of the World Economic Forum, and you can help him get there! It's based on online votes via YouTube. It's simple. Just click here , click Vote, select the video called "A Message to Davos," and then click the green thumbs up button. That's it! You can vote once a day from now until Jan. 15. But as Lavar Burton used to say, you don't have...

I promised I would tell you about my exciting Christmas presents. I'm so stoked about my new Flip Video camera. I've basically wanted one since like last February when I contemplated buying one before I headed to the UK. I decided against it and bought myself a Mac laptop instead. Then I got uber-jealous of Emily's when I got to play with it when I visited her. I kept putting it off, and now I'm really glad I did. Apparently my parents had purchased a Flip cam for both my sister and I in August and then had to convince me not to buy my own until after Christmas! I got a chance to play with it a little over the break. It's so easy to use! I'm uploading a video to YouTube right now. I love that I'll have a chance to film away from my computer. I'd forgotten how much of my childhood is on film, but since high school all I've had is pictures. Now I can get back to capturing the little things like playing cards with my family, or the reality of an Iowa wi...

Ever have one of those weeks where you feel like you're running in place? That has been the epitome of my week. I've been trying to get a class I'm teaching next week prepped since Monday. It's Friday, and I'm still not entirely done. I knew that I had things scheduled Tuesday-Thursday. Monday I got some stuff done. And then I got lucky, my schedule cleared out a little as things got canceled. But tasks and problems and meetings and parties just popped up to take over. And somehow I find myself decently prepped for one class, but now I have homework to complete for an online course I'm co-developing for the summer. I don't know how I'm going to cope these first few weeks of the semester. I feel like I'm basically taking an online class, teaching one, developing another, trying to pull together a presentation proposal, oh, and dealing with everything else (i.e. daily grind stuff) at work including 1200 students returning. No big deal. Plus the crazy c...

My poor abandoned blog. I really didn't mean to disappear for this long. I was without internet and then mostly just too lazy. But that is all going to change. I'm horrible about New Years resolutions. Once or twice I've made it all the way to June, but usually I've broken or forgotten them by February. I'm hoping to take advantage of knowing my strengths and weaknesses this year. Last year I managed to succeed at two month long challenges. So I'm going to go with that this year. I'll do a series of 12 month-long challenges and one year long. The year long is the blog. I want to post at least 3 times a week. Let's call the week Sunday to Saturday. This month's challenge will be "no fast food." I usually try to start out the year eating healthy but get stressed or busy and fall back on quick fixes. This year I'm going to try and negate that fall back. This means no fast food or Panera unless it's a work function and I have no choice....