Genius!

This is the best picture I have seen since last night*:


*The picture I saw last night was glorious so...competition was stiff. Otherwise...this is the best picture I have seen in a few months.

Art: Breathe It In!

There is an art museum here on campus, and I have never seen all of it. It's right next to the main library, and I've even used the art library several times (it's attached to the museum). My first semester I went to one of the three floors and saw their ancient things, which was fun, but there were two unexplored floors. (In my defense, I tried to go a few times when I first came here but, for example, they were fumigating.)

So today I had an hour and a half to fill up, and I kind of wanted to break up my 11 hours of sitting with some walking...so off I went to the art museum. I started in the "Western Art: Late Medieval to the Present" collection. Once inside I stood there for a minute, breathing in art-filled air and suddenly all I felt was relief. And then I remembered that that always happens in a museum. I walk in and see beautiful things; they instantly start seeping into my being and all is right in the world.

In honor of museums the world over, here are some of my favorite paintings that I can remember off the top of my head (I have a folder of them on Vera so I may post an addendum later):




Maxfield Parrish's Lantern Bearers. American Illustration...I love it so! It's so unappreciated, especially by art historians (except me, of course. Hah!)





Caravaggio, for all his many, many flaws, has a special place in my heart. Is this best illustrated by a painting about decapitation? Maybe not, but it's just so mesmerizing.
Judith Beheading Holofernes





Things I have soft spots for: Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon and drama.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps, and, just because I love you, here is another version.






Sometimes I think Waterhouse doesn't get enough respect because his paintings are so popular with the common people, but really, his paintings are beautiful and wistful.
Lamia






Rain! I love rain. And I love a good rainy atmosphere captured in a painting. Thank you, Caillebotte. This is also the only painting in this list I've seen in person.

Paris Street, Rainy Day

These Bugs: I Hate Them So

It's story time again and the topic isn't really anymore pleasant than fire. So many of you faithful readers have no experience with the thing I'm going to discuss--demonstrated by your confused looks and use of the phrase "A what?" I feel compelled to enlighten you. Or I should say, I feel compelled to make you all share my dread. Plus, these stories are pretty good (though maybe not as good as the spider babies, you be the judge).

The subject of today's stories is camel hoppers. Technically they are camel crickets, but they were called camel hoppers in Alabama, where I was first exposed. And so their name has continued. Let's take a look:

(Words cannot express how horrifying it was to have a whole page of those pictures on Google. Augh.)

Here are a few facts you should know about hoppers. First off, I love grasshoppers. They are charming! Camel hoppers are like horrible, mutated grasshoppers that were experimented on by a shady government organization. Their weird hunched backs remind me of aliens (partly because of a dream). They jump crazy high and really spastically--you never know which way they're going! They get really big. They're ugly and foul. Also, they're tough to kill because they've got steroid-enhanced exoskeletons. Now, let us continue.

I've had several duels with hoppers. I'm not really good at killing bugs, I will admit. I often use shoes and I jump around a lot, but I'll do it. But hoppers are hard because of all those reasons I mentioned, mainly the jumping. Here are two of my battles:

The time: Several summers ago. The place: the hallway outside my room. It's mid-morning. I start walking down the hall. There's a hopper, just chilling there on the floor. I confess I hollered for my Mom but she was in the shower. What was I supposed to do? Well, I got my Mom's math book* that was handy. And I threw it at the hopper. I missed. I got it again. This process continued until I finally landed that book smack on top of that thing. But I knew its crazy exoskeleton had protected it and I had to do something else. So I stood on that book. For a while. My Mom wasn't really impressed with my tactics, but that may be because I let her clean it up.

The time: two summers ago. The place: the hallway between the laundry room and the garage door. I was going to go to Girls' Camp in a few weeks and I had a case of water bottles sitting near the garage door for that occasion. Around this time I did some laundry and I saw a real beast of a hopper skulking around the freezer, but I just hurried out and forgot about him. The morning I was supposed to leave, he came back, as big as ever and I had to do something about him. So I picked up that case of bottled water and dropped it on him (I had to get a lot closer...cases of water bottles don't throw as well as books). I'll admit it was kind of satisfying. Unfortunately I had to take the case with me, so not long after my victory I had to pick it up and scrape the corpse off the bottom. And yes, I left it for my Dad to clean up. It's how I roll.

Are you starting to feel like you have bugs crawling all over you yet? Well, this next story is my best AKA my worst. Is it the root of all my fears? Pretty much. This is the story of my stalker hopper.

The time: mid-1990's, bedtime. The place: my room downstairs in Missouri. I was lying in bed, all cozy. The door was open and the hall light was on. I looked over. There was a hopper in the middle of my floor. I knew it would crawl all over me in my sleep so of course I got out of bed and crept upstairs to my sister's room to sleep on her floor. Problem solved!

Except when I woke up in the early hours of the morning I saw that hopper. Sitting on my pillow. Looking at me. I got in my sister's bed and my groupie was gone by the time real morning came.

Later that day I was sitting on the floor in my sister's room. I looked over and saw that hopper. On my shoulder. Looking at me. What followed was a lot of screaming and jumping and shuddering and more screaming. We killed that thing, for the most part, with a binder and dumped its still-twitching body out the window.

And that, my friends, is a faithful narrative of all my dealings with camel hoppers. Or some of them anyway.

*I know it's cruel to use a book like this. But it's a math book so it's okay.

Spring!

I was going to write a whole post about the glories and wonders of spring and how it's going to be here so very, very soon. But then I found this picture and really, need I say more?

Something Worth Sharing

I ran across this yesterday, and because I like you all so much, I wanted to share it with you. All I ask is that if any of you ever make it, please send me pictures and a review.

Bacon Explosion!

(Grosssssssssssssss.)

Fire: A Story, with Pictures

Where were you on the evening of November 14th, 2005? I know where I was--Wal-Mart. My roommate and I went and I bought, among other things, a small heater and peach popsicles. As we pulled into our underground parking we heard a lot of sirens. "Those sound awfully close," we said. Why? Because our apartment was on fire, that's why.

Here is our laundry room. Apparently our third roommate heard what sounded like boiling water and opened her door to find the laundry room on fire. She ran out and called 911 and the rest is history. You can see pretty clearly where it started, and the heater is on the other side, behind the door. We figure the heater set something on the trash can on fire, but the firefighter people never made up their minds. They really tried to blame on the battery-operated sweeper/mop thing that had no batteries in it though.

Anyway, they had to redo that whole room and put in a new heater and water heater and washer and drying etc. etc. Also, apparently our cable and doorbell ran through that room so we lost our cable and the doorbell stopped working.

Other fun things about this experience: they had to repaint the whole apartment so we spent a night stacking up all of our stuff in the middle of our rooms. Then the painters threw other stuff on top of it, which was cool (they also broke the light in the dining room and got paint all over).

No heat! That's fun, right? Luckily I had my brand new little heater. I sat in front of that thing every night and did my homework. It served me well. Oh, and we had no hot water for a while too. We were kind of gross for a spell, but sometimes we'd heat up water on the stove to wash our hair.

I could go on and on about the wonderful things about fires* but instead I will list them all in bullet fashion:

• No cable. I really missed coming home and flipping channels.
  
• Soot gets evvvvvvverywhere. I still found it places almost a year later when I moved.
  
• Smoke smells bad. Which made us smell bad. We were very dirty, smelly, cold people for about a month. Oh, and we couldn't do laundry so our clothes smelled too.
  

There were some good things too. Truth be told, I get a little nostalgic about that long, cold, dirty month. Partly because I get nostalgic about everything and partly because we got Goblet of Fire as a reward for our trials. It was a good reward. Also, we got our rent cut in half for that month. I bought Dear Frankie with my fire money.

Finally, I will give you one last factoid. Today I happened to be wearing the same sweater I was wearing that night. The cuffs got rather blackened from walking around and packing up my stuff for the night, and they are still a bit dingy. Can you tell? They are, even if you can't tell:
*Just for the record, I know our fire really wasn't that bad. We didn't lose anything more valuable than our random laundry room items like soap and spare lightbulbs. Plus, we didn't have pay for any of the fixing. So really...it wasn't that bad. Just saying...I know I'm a lucky duck.

My Taste: What is it?

I taste like Bread. I am a staple in almost everyone's diet. Friends like me are a complement to any other friends I get on with almost everyone, remaining mostly in the background, but providing substance when it would otherwise be lacking. What Flavour Are You?

The Words: I Don't Want to Read Them

I've been doing my reading for class this morning and here are the opening sentences of two of my articles:

"Bronzed skin over rippling muscles, the gleam of oil smoothed over strong bodies...got your attention? Well, it's time to continue wrestling with the search process. Back to the mats!"*

and

"The information needs and information-seeking behavior of social scientists have been the focus of inquiry within library and information science (LIS) research for decades. Folster reviewed the major studies that have been conducted in this area over the past three decades. She found that research methods had developed through several stages."**

I can't decide which is worse.

*"Inside a Searcher's Mind: the Seven Stages of an Online Search" by Barbara Quint
**Information Seeking in Academic Research: a Study of the Sociology Faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison" by Yi Shen

2008: I Liked You

2008 is gone forever and there will never be another one, isn't that sad? I don't generally tend to be a fan of one year more than the other--they are all good for different reasons usually--but I did really enjoy 2008. 2007 was all right for the most part but 2008 had some really great things. Here a few of my favorite 2008 things/happening/stuffs (luckily 2008 included a new camera so I am not without a visual record of these lovely things):

• Adult Reader's Advisory. Still my favorite SLIS class...which maybe is not saying much, but it is my very very favorite!
  
• Sundry foods: Haagen-Dazs Fleur de Sel, Gatorade Rain lime flavor, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (aka BCE), Inn-n-Out burgers, gummi coke bottles and probably some other stuff.
  
• Travels: Chicago, Washington, Utah (twice)
  
• Summer in Bloomington. Just in general.
  
• D'CALC! The best librarian apartment that ever existed.

I also did a number of new things, and they were all fun and exciting so I'm putting them in their own special section of specialness:

• Disneyland! Oh how do I love thee... In some ways I'm jealous that I never went as a kid, but I also wouldn't trade my maiden voyage for anything. I'm still hoping they'll have a librarian job at the Beast's Library in May...
• Las Vegas. OK, so I never actually got out of the car, but I saw the city from the ground and that is the closest I have ever been. Maybe next time I go down that way I can stop for the loo at Caesar's Palace.
  
• IKEA. What was my favorite part? Probably seeing those wooden drawing figures available in a variety of bright hues.
  
• I got to introduce the Boyfriend to my parents which was...not a big deal at all as it turns out.
  

Other runnerups (runners up?) for interesting events: turning down a co-worker (sorry, Nemesis), dying my hair red, nightswimming with a frog, the museum in Ohio, a crazy awesome first half of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica and some other stuff I can't remember. Anyway, 2009 is looking full of nice things as well. Since I like lists, let's look at a list of things I'm looking forward to, in rough chronological order:

• Spring.
  
• Spring Break! (Disclaimer: ! is not an accurate indicator of the level of excitement.)
• Graduation foreverty ever from school
• Moving to Utah, where I never planned to live again
• Disneyland! Again!
• Getting a job? Maybe? Making real money? So I can start paying those loans back.
• Spring Break! (Disclaimer: Multiple listings do not accurately indicate level of excitement.)

So until one of those things happens, I will try in vain to enjoy winter and salivate over pictures of Disneyland. What, illustrious readers, are some things you look forward to in 2009?

Who Needs Food?

Ah, school is here again. Just four little classes stand between me and permanent academic freedom. Unfortunately raging cases of senioritis and pining also stand between me and that freedom, but hopefully I can coax a few more good grades out of myself. In the meantime, I will be living on a diet of these two things:

Roommates: I am sorry.

Christmas: I like it

Well, Christmas has come and gone once again. And even though my Dad still says it will be here again just like *snap of the fingers* that, I don't know that I agree with him anymore now than I did as a 10 year old. At any rate, it has come and gone and was one of my favorite recent Christmases. (I'm trying to remember Christmas of 2007 and...I'm blank.)

I don't really like listing and comparing Christmas presents...it usually makes me feel like I had some kind of inadequate Christmas and then I'm irritated with myself for feeling that my Christmas was inadequate when really it was (adequate, that is). But since I haven't blogged for a while and I did get a few things I'm particularly pleased with, I'm going to show y'all a few things I got for Christmas. Do not feel inadequate.



Jeeves! I am so very impressed that my Mom went to all the trouble of ordering this over the Internet. Have I mentioned this show before? It is so funny and British. (Why do they use the American flag image for the box? It's British!)






New Snow Patrol! I like them more all the time. (Though shame on them for putting in the F-word.) This one wasn't exactly a surprise since I personally put it into Santa's cart...and then put it into my own stocking. Ah well, it doesn't take any pleasure out of the listening.





The Office! Who doesn't love it? I only have Season 2 (which I maintain is the best), and much as I love it, I'm looking forward to watching this season again. A lot of the episodes I've only seen once or twice and that can really affect my Office trivia score on Facebook. So it's entertaining and useful!





Overall it was a great Christmas. Tasty foods, fun times, a sparkly Christmas tree and sleeping in. So even if one of you got plane tickets to Tokyo or a lifetime supply of McDonald's breakfast burritos, I will not feel inadequate! Oh, and did I mention my favorite present that came the day after Christmas? Let me illustrate:
Don't worry, we like each other (4 rillz). Oh wait, should I illustrate that too? Okay.

The Days: They Pass

(Song for this post: "Hogwart's Hymn")

So, another semester has come and gone, and with only one more to go, my days in Indiana are rather numbered. I could probably do some math and figure out just how many days, but I'm not that motivated. Anyway, during my last year at BYU I found myself taking note of all my last times for things...last Fall Fling, last time seeing the tree in the Quad, last pumpkin thing at Jamba Juice (what was that name?), last time smelling those crazy trees that I love* and the like.

So, around October this year I started doing the same thing here. Last fall scenery at Brown County, last Halloween with Ferskner, last December breakfast for the program (mm, bagel), last work shift with Marcue and such. Basically I am being preemptively nostalgic half the time and the other half of the time I'm counting down days until things like Friday, the day I go home, Christmas and oh yeah, the 26th. Not to mention things way more in the future like the day I graduate, the day I get my tax return and the day I finally see Half-Blood Prince.

I can't really remember the point of this post except to say that it's hard to be full of anticipation for the future while still reveling in the moment and all the while sighing over things I'll miss in six months. Even though I'm excited about the future and all of those plans, I'm already getting sad to move. At least I will have plenty of time in the car to cry my eyes out with only a small audience.

*Bradford pear trees! People think they stink, and maybe they do but I love that smell. They're my favorite part of spring at BYU. I want to inhale the smell right now, but all I can smell is my bagel.

So...

I bought new sunglasses tonight...

Aren't they great?!

Food: I like it

Thanksgiving is good for a lot of things--family gatherings, good sale prices, sweater weather. It's also good for a few of my favorite foods. Are they favorites because I only eat them 1-3 times a year? Perhaps. Either way, all I know is that I talk about them a lot and hound my Mom about it every year. "And yams? We're having yams right? You got the marshmallows? And the beans? Did you get the right beans? They have to be the right beeeeeans!"

So, as that may have tipped you off, two of my favorite T-Gives foods are green bean casserole and yams. And of course, the T-Gives Food Crown goes to pumpkin pie but that one is so expected I decided to focus more on the others because they are tasty.


I love these yams so much. They are pretty traditional and maybe boring that way but seriously, if it's not Baroque broke, why fix it? I know some people like big chunks of yams and that is good too, but these ones just melt like delicious yam-tasting butter.


Ahh...forkfuls of delicious creamy, crunchy beany goodness. First I have to explain something here. I always always always always make this with French cut frozen green beans but apparently Wal-Mart didn't want to please me because I couldn't find a trace of them. So I had to settle for the pedestrian cut green beans, which are not as good I realized. I like the slivers of green beans better than fat hunks of them. Anyway, it's still delicious and I wound up eating 75% of it myself. Also, cream of mushroom soup is the best thing Campbell's ever invented.

In summary: Thanksgiving foods are delicious and delectable.

I am full of Sense

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When you can blog forever, what do you blog for?

I wasn't going to blog about this, but now that I'm sitting here with little to do with even less confidence in myself to do my work well, I think I will.

I saw Twilight last night at midnight. I wasn't planning to, but having two little roommates that hadn't experienced a midnight show gave me a reason. I'm all about sacrificing so others can have good experiences in life, you know? Anyway, that part of the adventure was fun. We all made shirts and got there an hour and a half early, just in time to nab the last three seats at the rail. There were about four guys in the theater and there were lots of Twilight shirts. I'm sure one girl made her face vampire pale (aka "pale white"). There were fewer tweens than I expected--most of the crowd was 18 and up. So I despaired a little less for the younger generation. The lowest point of the night was trying to get out of the parking lot via the one little exit. Luckily Erasure was handy.

As for the movie itself, well, I was overall pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a work of art, but as far as book adaptations go it succeeded for two reasons. First, it was faithful to the book where it counted. The story moved along in the same fashion, the characters were generally true to their paper and ink twins. The second reason is that the movie either improved on some things or at least avoided some pitfalls of the book. Part of that is because Bella isn't narrating the whole time so you get less "Edward's face was like a white sculpture, except the sculpture was so beautiful no human could ever have made it." Movies also make it easier to summarize things and so a lot of things were abbreviated and summarized (like the meadow and pretty much every Bella and Edward conversation). The movie also made their attraction to each other a little more normal and less "You're so hot and mysterious" and "I'm addicted to your smell."

As for the actors, I have no real complaints. I actually thought Kristen Stewart was a good match for Bella, if a little lifeless (which...again, good match for Bella). RPattz was fine. His hair looked good for the most part. I still struggle with Peter Facinelli aka Carlisle and it seemed like he was using a weird accent. I liked Charlie. But I always like Charlie. He's almost my favorite character.

Oh, and Jacob. His hair in his first scene was so so bad. I literally shrunk into an awkward fetal position with embarassment. Luckily he wore a hat in all his scenes until his last one at the prom and, thank goodness, his hair looked like it might have really been attached to his head. Besides that, I liked him. I think he'll grow on me the more I see it, and my palms are sweaty with New Moon anticipation.* He still doesn't match Jacob in my head but he has a nice smile and I enjoy that.

After all that lukewarm praise I now have to say there were lots of silly things, some I expected and some unexpected gems as well. I laughed at a number of inappropriate moments, and other times I just stifled myself with my scarf. Sparkly Edward? No thanks. The Cullens hunting in their 1920's Sunday best? Priceless. James wearing a zipped up leather jacket with no shirt underneath? Strangely disturbing. Stephenie Meyer's cameo? Painfully awkward. Eric's hair? Distractingly bad.

Overall I'd give it a solid B. I have a feeling I'm going to be reading New Moon soon and Jacob will break my brain all over again.

*This is not true. Except that I'm anticipating it. Without sweaty palms.

For the Love of Three Oranges Orange Juice

Last Saturday I got up bright and early-ish and headed off to Kroger with my roommate to enjoy the promised (free) bounties of their grand re-opening. Also, I needed conditioner. I got lots of free food, and it was a tasty food too but it was all rather salty. Corned beef? Pasta sauce? Sea salt potato chips? You get the idea. So it was very exciting to see a nice middle-aged man at an orange juice station. "I love orange juice!" I said to myself and made a beeline for it.

"Hi!" I said brightly to this nice man in a Santa hat. He greeted me similarly, and, eying my snappy brown hat, said, "I like that hat. I like your style." "Well," I said very cheerily, "you have a very nice hat too."

At this point he just started looking at me and smiling while I stood waiting for him to pour that dratted orange juice. "Well I just like your style!" he enthused. "Um, thanks," I said. Give me the orange juice. "What's your name?" he asked, still beaming at me relentlessly. I tell him, hoping it will get me the orange juice faster. Although at this point I was very ready to go get the egg nog a few steps away.

"Well, Miss Julie, I just got to ask for your number!"

...

Give me the orange juice!

"I...don't think my boyfriend would appreciate that..."

"Probably not, I'm sure you've got two."

"At least!"

Finally he pours me the most measly amount of orange juice ever, wishes me a happy holiday then looks me up and down before his parting words: "Why...I...I just like how you walk, I like your style!"

Yeah, okay, sir, thanks for giving me a creepy thing to associate orange juice with.

Upgrades

2008 has been a pretty eventful year for a lot of reasons. One reason 2008 has been cool is the number of things in my life that have been upgraded from okay things to way better things. To illustrate what I mean, I will show you some of my favorite upgrades.
My old brush. Do you like how it's completely split open and a bunch of the plastic brush parts are missing? Yeah. The new one is not only intact but also has this crazy gel handle that is all squishy and cool. It's so cool that hair kind of sticks to it a little bit but we're coping.

Speaking of hair, it's been just over two years since I whacked my hair off (temporary insanity?). There were a few cuts in between then and now, just to avoid the mullet look, but now I can say that I'm never going short again. Check out this upgrade:
I still have that ponytail of hair in my bathroom drawer back home. I always said I would keep it until I had that much hair on my head again and--hallejuah!--it's about to that point. Next!
I rode that bus pretty much everyday the last school year. It was okay, but I'm happy to not do that anymore ever again. Plus now I get to do fun stuff like pay for gas. Just kidding, little Leeloo car, I don't mind.
I don't have before and after pictures of my legs. You will all just have to believe me when I say my legs look way better than they did a few months ago when I didn't run regularly.

This is my favorite one. Well. Maybe after my hair...

Next on my list: bagels and cream cheese to replace my toast and jam.

Better late than never

A couple months ago I saw this meme all over the place, and I always did it in my head but that was it. Now I'm sitting at work with three periodicals to keep me busy for the next seven hours. So I think I'll do this now. These are all pretty much the worst names ever:

1. Rock Star Name (first pet, current car): Jingles Corolla (or Jingles Co'olla)

2. Gangsta Name (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe): Blue Ribbon Chocolate Cake Cute

3. Native American Name (favorite color, favorite animal): Pink Cat

4. Soap Opera Name (middle name, city where you were born): Ann Lake Arrowhead

5. Star Wars Name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name): Chrju

6. Superhero Name (2nd favorite color, favorite drink): Red Water

7. NASCAR Name (the first names of your grandfathers): Jay Doug

8. Stripper Name (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Aqva Pour Homme 3 Musketeers (oy!)

10. TV Weather Anchor Name (your 5th grade teacher's last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Fredericks Fresno

11. Spy Name (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Spring Morning Glory? Halloween Snapdragon?

12. Cartoon Name (favorite fruit, article of clothing you're wearing right now): Peach Hoodie

13. Hippie Name (what you ate for breakfast, favorite tree): English Muffin Weeping Willow

Seriously, those are the worst names ever! Red Water???

I can't help myself

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