Oh god oh god. I just got off the phone with a professor who said I was his #1 choice for his TA spot at Missouri. This is fantastic but IT IS NOT HELPING ME NARROW DOWN MY CHOICES. I already have a big trip planned (and booked!) for next week: I'm flying to New York on the 11th, taking the train to Boston on the 14th, flying to Chicago on the 15th ( Read more... )

I just got into Columbia. COLUMBIA IN NEW YORK CITY. EEEEEEEEEEEE ( Read more... )

So at the urging of a friend I just signed up for Twitter, because clearly I need yet another online-updating thing to neglect. You know, as if I didn't already have multiple blogs and Facebook and Picasa photo albums that I allow to languish for months at a time. Twitter is cute, and I can see how it's useful for some people, but I'm not sure how ( Read more... )

Oh god oh god. Real temp: -10 F. Feels like: -28??????

The insanity can stop anytime now, please. I am terrified that the extreme cold is going to kill my car battery; it already struggles to start every time. This is the kind of cold that takes your breath away, that leaves you dazed the instant you step outside. After I left a friend's house last ( Read more... )

So after Christmas shopping with my brother in the midst of a whirling snowstorm, I stumbled indoors this evening to find my parents laying out piping-hot ginger snap cookies made with my grandmother's special recipe, with an apple pie baking in the oven. It was like I had suddenly been blasted back to the 1950s . . . and it was awesome. Mmmm, ( Read more... )

I am 24 today. Good grief, how did that happen? I feel like pulling a Jessica Simpson when she nattered "I'm 23 and that's halfway to 25 and that's mid-twenties!" Ha.

It's been a good time since I graduated from college a year and a half ago, if frustrating as well. Once you're outside the school system, it's so hard to tell if you're . . . well, ( Read more... )

So one of my closest friends just moved to Australia - as in permanently, which is kind of crazy but awesome at the same time. She cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner for her boyfriend's family and some of the food was met with . . . skepticism, shall we say. "I am definitely the only one finishing off the leftover pumpkin pie," she reported. "I ( Read more... )

Mitch Albom wrote such a great column last Sunday in the Detroit Free Press on the arguments over whether to assist the Big Three automakers. I can absolutely understand how people are freaked out over the current financial crisis, that they’re angry how their taxpayer money is being spent, that they feel like big companies are being bailed out ( Read more... )

Ahhhh, I cannot believe it is finally voting day. The campaigning has been going on for so long I was getting the sense it would never end; I was tired of the election coverage a year ago. Now I’m all keyed up again.

It’s weird thinking of such a huge election this is and how many people abroad are watching. And trust me, they’re watching.  I talked ( Read more... )

Monday morning I heard about the Istanbul bombings.

I’m going to Istanbul in September for 4 days.

Ohhh god.

We’re going because my friend really, really wanted to see the city, and I do too, but I was always a little leery of the safety situation, especially for two young women on their own. I checked the US Dept. of State travel warnings before we ( Read more... )