Meet Me

Hello all! I am alive and DONE with the semester! It was a fun semester, and I had lots of fun in two of my classes (Writer's Workshop and 'the Fairy Tale Class'). I could do without math and astronomy, but they weren't bad.

So now I'll get back to a promised entry...

I went to St. Louis!

My hotel (Hyatt) was right next to the Arch.



And the hotel was pretty sweet too.



And had a sweet view of the city.



The beds were so comfortable and there was this lounge that we got access to (for like $40 a night or something?) that had food out all day. MMMM. It was like free food basically (since the school funded the trip). The only thing more delicioso than good food is good FREE food!

Here's the obligatory photo of me with the Arch.



In case you forgot, I was in St. Louis to present a scholarly paper I wrote about The Bluest Eye. That went well. I was only asked a few questions from the audience and they were all easy to answer.



Here are some of the fun things I experiences in St. Louis:

The City Park
Just a few blocks from the hotel was this park filled with sculptures and interactive stuff, like a set of panels that played different notes when you stepped on them. Here's some of the cool stuff found there.





Hooters
I went to Hooters for the first time! And it was pretty delicious.



St. Louis Zoo
YAY! I love the zoo! Here are some pics from the zoo.

City Museum
This was one of the coolest places I went to in St. Louis, and ever in my life. It was basically this huge building that was filled with games and tunnels and stuff for adults. It was amazing!!








Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my own camera (got those pics from friends) but trust me, there was A LOT to explore and I spent like a half hour just running through a set of tunnels on the first floor that seemed to never end. It was amazing and if you go to St. Louis, you must go.

I also went to the actual museum.


And to the Museum of Westward Expansion, which is located beneath the Arch.


Of course I rode up the Arch too! You have to ride up in this tight little pod. Here I am with my friend Todd as we rode up.


And the view from the arch:

I also took a nap in a very strange position:


And I played Scrabble. And yes, Todd and I won (duh!)


Here's a group shot of the juniors who went on the trip.


While I knew everybody from seeing them at school, I had fun getting to know them better.
But since I'm not that social, I mostly hung out with my good friends Rebecca and Todd.


Aww!

Here we are on the final night, eating at the banquet.


Our school won like 7 (thousand?) awards that night so we were very proud. GO TCNJ!!!

So in summary, I had a wonderful time there, loved the city, and would definitely go back.

Boys In The Trees

So as you know from my last entry, I recently got a cat with my roommates Ross and Christie. We picked it up from the Trenton Animal Shelter, where they told us we would have to get her spayed and then continued to address our new kitty as female. So we brought home our new princess...

Or so we thought....

The day after we brought the cat home, my good redheaded friend Jenna came over and immediately said, "Oh, it's a boy?" As a future cat lady, Jenna knows lots about cats so we started researching.


Seriously, can you even tell the difference? Contrary to popular belief, male cats who are 7 weeks old do not have 'hanging things' or 'fuzzy dice' or any of that. Before their testes descend, it's hard to tell a male from a female.

But we got a few expert opinions and we have determined the sex of our kitten.

So no more Esther Greenwood! I really love that name and will have to find a female pet so I can still use it.

On the bright side, we all agreed very quickly on a name for a male cat. I just finished reading the fantastic novel Song of Solomon

And we all like that name for our cat. So, now you can officially welcome Solomon into our family!

Paper Kitten Dream

Something pretty exciting happened to me today!

After I got home from work around 1pm, I hopped in my car with Ross and we drove through the rain and into Trenton.

Nope, I was not going to get drugs or a gun. Trenton is also home to an animal shelter, which was our destination. The shelter itself was kind of sketchy, but we made it there and picked up our new cat!

Isn't she adorable?!?!

We brought her home and she had a lot of fun in Ross and Christie's room, playing with plastic bags and cat toys, and running around the room exploring.

As we were documenting her first day home, she used the litter box for the first time! AWW!

That was her first visit, where she just peed. Her second visit was....... more interesting. It resulted in her first bath.

She is clearly not a fan of water, but as Ross pointed out, we need to get her accustomed to it for when she goes fishing!

After her bath, she licked her wet foot sadly.

And then continued to play. When Ross and I had to go to school, she tried to prevent Ross from tying his shoes

and then perched on his shoulder.

If you're wondering why I keep calling her "she," it's because we haven't agreed on a name yet. Ross and I want to call her either Esther Greenwood (after the main character in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar) or Remedios the Beauty (from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of my favorite characters ever), but Christie doesn't like those names, so we're still thinking.

But in the end, her name is not that important I guess. What's more important is that we are happy to have saved her from being murdered and we're excited to provide her with a nice home and train her how to do sweet tricks like doing the dishes and updating my blog when I'm too busy.

Now I just need to introduce her to Richard Parker.... or maybe not.

12 of 12 - April 2010

Hello world! I'm alive! My St. Louis post will be up in the next couple of days. But today is the 12th, so first, here's my 12 of 12!

Once again, thanks to my dear friends Polt and David for reminding me!

My day started with Astronomy class. I know, ZzZzZzZzZz. Here is Professor Wickramsinghe writing on the board.

And since today is Monday, I had to do a lab after class.

After that snoozefest, I came home to find my housemate Yapenschteinen cooking me some lunch.

I headed back to school for my next class of the day, Writer's Workshop. Before heading to class, I had to read the stories and leave some comments so I sat in Bliss Lounge and scribbled some notes on the student stories, like "Try harder next time" and "This sucks more than J-Lo's Brave" and stuff.

I have this class in my favorite room in Bliss Hall cause I get to sit at a round table so I can better gaze into the eyes of the poor soul whose writing I am harshly criticizing. Here's where I sit.

And that chick in the chair next to mine is one of my favorite peepz and one of the best writers in my class, Colleen.

After that class, I came home and had a nosebleed. Blood dripped on my hoodie so I had to soak it in cold water to get the blood out.

My nose has bled like five times in the past three days! Annoying.
So then I FINALLY filed my taxes.

Since it was nice, I went outside and enjoyed three of my favorite things: cheese, iced tea, and Toni Morrison.

I read for a while, did some other junk, then got very excited at 7pm for Jeopardy! I've been following the three-day winner Morgan and he's pretty good. He won again today, guessing the correct answer to final Jeopardy.

The answer was "Quidditch" and I swear, I actually knew the right answer this time!

After that, I tried to cook these cookies that have been in the fridge since the day Joan Rivers was born but they came out like this:

So I guess they were too old to bake properly....

Then I ended the day with Christie as we watched one of my favorite shows, United States of Tara.

I had a pretty average day. WHAT ABOUT YOU?!