thanksgiving highlights

• Time off from work
• Family
• Turkey (my favorite holiday meat!), stuffing, some form of potatoes (mashed with gravy (personal fav) or cheesy potatoes (close 2nd)), pie (I got to try sweet potato pie for the first time this year — yum!), delicious rolls. Three times.
• Celebrating mom's birthday at Cheddar's
• Movie nights with Mark
• Thanksgiving dinner with three kinds of wine rotating through my glass
• Thinking about Christmas
• Actually going to the gym twice over break instead of just thinking I should
  
• Organizing the bathroom
• At 1am Saturday morning (this is following one of our big Thanksgiving dinners), Mark, Brian, and I deciding we're hungry, and devouring a frozen pizza and Oreos. Reminds me of college days.

party in the mods!

Friday was so much fun. Our friend Kate is currently a fill-in resident director for two RDs who were/are on maternity leave this semester. Friday night, Kate hosted a party in her mod! And, yes, she does have a whole mod to herself. She really only uses the lounge, the bathroom, the box for her bedroom, and room one for her kitchen. But if she wanted, she could have a whole sweet six-room apartment! :) We were warned in advance we could not fulfill any possible unfulfilled college fantasies of having a drunken orgy in the RD apartment, so it wasn't that kind of party (as so many of the ones I attend are... ... ...nor have I ever had that kind of fantasy). Kate had a nice selection of teas, some mixed nuts, and some tasty no-bake cookies. A good number of people showed up, and there was conversation and Catch Phrase. Once it was down to five people, Catch Phrase couldn't proceed as written in the rules very easily, so Kate, Brian, Tim, Bethany, and I set a goal of how far around the circle to get it (all the way, including the starting person a second time) plus two more people. Harder than it sounds, people. When we finally succeeded in our quest, it was just after 2 a.m. I think. We were pretty excited though. Someone said it definitely called for celebration cheese fries. Bethany and Tim left, but the other three of us did hit Druber's. I went to bed after 3:30, which is so much later than my usual bedtime.

cicada wing cookies

Last night, Brian presented on periodical cicadas to the junior high youth group from our church. It was great. I was already familiar with most of the information, and I still found it very interesting. He showed some of his awesome pictures (and a couple of my videos) by projecting them on our wall, and he played some neat recordings of his through our sound system. I did my part by making cicada wing cookies (not totally accurate representations by any means but still fun).

old.

This is old news, but I just checked the email account I use for online registration, and this made me laugh. Some of you have probably seen this with your own name.

lars and the real girl

Since I don't know about what to post, here is a movie recommendation: Lars and the Real Girl. Some will say it's a good story about giving people time to work through things, but I think it's even broader than that. I think it reminds us that everyone — no matter if there's something big s/he is working through or if s/he appears "normal" — has his/her own version of reality, and it's important to be mindful of that in order to live well together. Watch it. It will take you through different emotions. It's funny. It's moving. It's good.

so nice to not feel dread or dispair

After the election, that is. So unlike the last two presidential elections. Hooray! It was so exciting to go vote, though my vote did not so much matter in terms of our state's electoral votes. I had some small hope that Kansas might Barack the boat and go in slight favor of Obama, but my hopes were way off. Stupid KAKE 10 gave me false hope for a bit: The first time local news came on after I turned on the tv, Susan and whoever reported and had a corresponding graphic giving Obama 72% and McCain 28%. I promptly let out a "Holy shit!" I calmed myself a bit by acknowledging that only 1% of precincts were reporting, but Holy shit! 72% for Obama! Only to have such excitement dashed when at the end of their reporting on local races, Susan and whoever came back to tell me, "Correction: We had our graphics switched. That's 72% for McCain and 28% for Obama."

The evening was only full of good news for the presidential race, and it was so exciting to watch this time. Unfortunately I was in the bathroom when it was announced that McCain had called Obama to concede, so I kind of missed the big moment, but oh well. McCain's concession speech brought tears to my eyes. There was the guy I respected back in 2003. I have long wished McCain had won the Republican nomination in 2000. I think the Republicans still would have won over Gore, but I believe we would have had a much better past eight years. As long as he hadn't found some other wack job to be his running mate... That aside, anyone think there's any chance of McCain being awarded a cabinet position?

Though it's been difficult to think much about anything besides the election and my strong, strong hope that Obama would win, in other news, I've had a couple of recent food successes. One: At an open house of a downtown business a while back, I sampled a very tasty mango curry dip. I bought a packet of the dry mix. This week I mixed it up to use — instead of a dip — as a spread, and have been eating turkey breast, alfalfa sprouts, and mango curry spread wraps for lunches. Two: I used a cup of my ill-fated pumpkin puree (I can copy the tale of that from a comment I left on someone else's blog if anyone's interested) to make penne with fresh pumpkin white wine cream sauce. I read a few recipes for cream sauces and merged a few to come up with this one. It was a tasty success.

Look, ma, no cats.

look who was a bat for halloween

omg, i'm a crazy cat lady.