Life in Denim and Flip Flops

I'm getting so excited about BEDA. If you're planning on joining us, we've invited you to a conversation on Google Wave. It's a little easier to ask questions/collaborate in one place. A few of us put together some questions to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group (and any random readers). I'll paste them below. I'm so excited about getting to know you all a little better. (Ok, some of you I know pretty well. Like that poor soul who lived with me and that one who's known me for over a decade now.) I love having new blogs to read. I'm going to try and throw some explanations in for a few of the themes since... um one or two I suggested don't make much sense. Don't feel like you have to post on those themes. Those are just the brainchild of the 4 of us original BEDA buddies in case any of us need some inspiration for a post. So feel free to use them as you like! (The calendar is also linked in the sidebar!) And without further adieu, the i...

Create your own lantern to celebrate Earth Hour. Earth Hour is all about taking a stand against climate change. All you have to do is turn off your lights from 8:30-9:30 in your timezone to make a visual statement of your support. Cities around the world participate, with some stunning images resulting. Check them and other ways you can help out, on their webpage www.earthhour.org

anxiety uncertainty heartpounding mind racing, explaining away.... that sound that rustle that creak that movement at the corner of your vision it's not there. that mental battle i have with myself it's draining. it's nothing. i was right. but i still pay a price. never quite calm. always alert. the paranoia haunts me. heightened awareness. tensing, at every. little. thing. it will recede. but slowly, normal so far away.

I haven't posted a TILT blog since ... *consults archive quickly*...crap, like December if you count my bitching about snow post. If not, then November. Wow. Thanks to Christina and Nicola for getting me started back on TILT before BEDA hits. new washing machine - Yep. I'm geeky like that. After being without one for almost 6 weeks, I was so excited to get mine. It arrived almost an hour earlier than scheduled last Thursday. :) It's been pretty busy ever since. As you can imagine, I've been piling up laundry. I did do some at my relative's and some hand-washing, but mostly I'll be doing a lot of laundry for a while! being mouse-free- My apartment has been mouse-free since March 13. I'm hoping that means I'm done. Finally starting to be less freaked out about finding another one. Of course now that I've said it, I've probably jinxed it. watching Mad Men- My boss has been talking about this show since...well since she's been my boss. I finall...

It's almost that time again! BEDA (Blog Every Day in April) is just around the corner. Our trusty leader, Maureen Johnson (also YA author) is doing her BEDA challenge in August this year. However, our original 4-some has decided April works better for us. Autumn , Nicola , Christina and I are ready for BEDA 2.0. This time we'll be joined by Ló and Amy . We realized last year that having someone else to read our blogs totally helped, as did having moral support from friends. The biggest challenge was coming up with something to write about! So to solve/alleviate that problem this year, we did a little brainstorming and came up with a plan. We've created a topic/theme for each day of the month. Thursdays will be our traditional "Things I love Thursday" and Sundays will be a Weekly Wrap up of media, books, food, fashion, etc that has kept our attention during the week. This way, if we don't have anything to blog about, we've got a backup theme. The calendar...

Today I spent most of the day helping my dad paint the front room. My parents put new windows in the house this fall and winter. They had a few problems with the picture window (ok, more than a few, but it finally got put in this week!). After all the waiting, they decided the front room needed a paint touch up. I ended up doing a lot of of the taping and trim work. Dad did the ladder work. Now we are both sore, but the front room looks wonderful :) Remind me of this if I ever decide to paint anything. The tournament games were fun to watch today too. I love watching tourney games with my parents. We're all a lot bit animated. And today was no different. Despite the fact that we all picked Kansas to win it all, we were cheering on UNI to pull off the upset. We weren't disappointed! Our brackets are a mess, bu it was totally worth it to the see Kansas taken down a notch. :)

I'm at my parents for the weekend. I couldn't not come home to watch basketball with my parents. Oh, and my godsister (that would be the girl my parents are godparents to/the daughter of my sister's godparents) was having a party for her confirmation. Always fun to hang out with her and her parents. However, right now I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open, so I'm headed to bed. More about basketball and my family tomorrow :)

Yesterday was not a great day. It wasn't awful, but lots of little things just didn't go my way. I got frustrated and by the time I left work I'd been seriously close to random tears. I was feeling fidgety and off for hours. So when I got home, I double-checked that the traps were still empty, (they were, yay!), changed clothes, and went out for a walk. I took my cell phone, my keys, and my iPod. I set out one direction where I knew there weren't too many hills and the chances of running into people I know (i.e. my students) wasn't great and just walked. I ended up taking a phone call for half of my walk, which is probably part of why I ended up getting 2.3 miles from my apartment before I decided I should turn around and go home. I really needed that walk. After all that outside alone time, things felt better in perspective. I couldn't change a lot of what had happened, or didn't have control over things I was worrying about. I just needed to clear my head....

Ok, there will be no more spending any money for a while. Ugh. This has proven to be a bit of an expensive last week and a half. Some of it I planned on spending, some of it not so much. The Ames trip I was planning on. No problems there. The oil change...a necessity, but certainly not my favorite way to spend money. The washing machine? Another necessary expense. I ended up spending less than I had originally planned (w/ a $200 rebate) in mind. But because I didn't get the rebate, I toyed with buying another top-loading machine. They're cheaper, but less efficient in the long run. I ended up with a name-brand front load high efficiency one. Since I don't plan on buying another washing anytime in the near (or distant) future, I figure the money I save on water and electric will be nice. Plus it's a brand I trust. I'm not usually a brand shopper. You should see me in a grocery store. I love store brands and cheap deals. But with something like an appliance I feel lik...

Last week I wore a dress to work (ok with tights and leggings) and today I didn't wear a coat (but I did have a long sleeve sweater). Therefore I officially declare it spring. Now some of you may be thinking that this weekend is officially spring. And technically you'd be right. (Don't forget to change your clocks!) But chances are, if you're saying that, you don't live in the midwest. Because here, spring doesn't believe in the arbitrary power of the calendar. It's entirely possible that we'll get more snow before May. This might explain why I had the overwhelming desire to be outside today. I'm going stir crazy from winter and really just needed to spend some time in the fresh air. So I took some time this afternoon to take a walk around the neighborhood. Despite the fact that I've lived here for almost 2 years, I don't know the neighborhood all that well. The first summer I was here I did a bit of exploring, but mostly around the college c...

I've spent a lot of time this week being nostalgic. My parents have been converting old family videos to DVD. They sent me one with an old choir concert. I had way too much fun watching it. It got me thinking about this song we sang that year. It became our anthem. It was all about making choices in life. Of course all I remember of it is the last 2 lines. So I Google the Spanish phrase and after about 20 minutes of digging through Spanish pages, library catalogs, and skimming the index of Frederico Garcia Lorca's complete works in Spanish, I found it! My new project is to translate it and maybe do something creative with it. Then yesterday when I was researching possible paper topics, I end up on the Oregon Trail wikipedia page. That was the beginning of a downward spiral. Next thing I know I'm searching old 90s educational computer games. Of course I was a good sister and pass the knowledge that you can play Crystal Caves online along to Manda. I've also spent time th...

is difficult. Right now Gretchen and Amy are out purchasing an opener now. But until after Amy googled how to do so without one. One of the suggestions was actually to use a child's ice skate. At about that point Gretchen put her food down and decided purchasing one was the best idea. I'm here to get the bread baking :) We'll see what they bring back to go with that for dinner!

I'm spending the weekend in Ames with Amy and Gretchen. There will be baking, wine, dinner, movies, and chilling :) I've been looking forward to it for a long time! Yay!!

So I promised a post about why my week was so awful and why I only got 3 hours of sleep Monday night. Long story short, I saw a mouse in my apartment. I am not an animal fan of any kind, and rodents are the worst! I reacted as you might think I would. I panicked a little and then called my parents :) They talked me into going back into the bedroom to see if I can find it. So just as I'm starting to calm down a little, I see it in the closet. Commence freaking out again. Dad talks me into trying to capture/kill it, convincing me that it is in fact more afraid of me than I am of it (hard to imagine) and that I've got fast enough reflexes (I still don't buy that). Thus begins a hour long game of "cat and mouse." I finally corner it (after much shrieking and a few screams) and am forced to kill it. *shudder* I finally calm down after it. Call Amy to keep me company while I try and out wait the adrenaline, when all of a sudden I hear something in the hallway. It's...