ahhh science

This week I have to give a presentation to my lab group about all the research I've been doing this summer. Apparently I'm a little more anxious about it than I was consciously aware because last night I had a horrible nightmare where it was right before I was supposed to present, and I was flipping through my powerpoint and all of my slides were messed up with the wrong text or in the wrong order and all of my Raman spectra had been replaced with roadmaps. When I woke up I had to check my presentation to make sure everything was okay. It was, except for the fact that I still don't actually have anything to say about my data. Maybe I'll go with a modern art feel and just throw it up on the projector and say, "Interpret it however you want!" and then run out of the room. 

I bet that will impress my professor. 

too bad "just be glad we made it here alive" is never quite enough

I dreamed of $6.50 macarons this morning. I was telling my mom how much cheaper they are in Europe (like 2 euros for a big one) and how I was going to buy one anyway. But then the store didn't have the flavor I wanted (passionfruit? why that was the one flavor I wanted, I'm not sure) so I left macaroonless. 

And I woke up missing French food and summers. 

I could use a vacation or something. Just saying. 

carmen san diego

For a while I thought that after this experience I'd be a total homebody and never want to leave the country again.

And while it's true that I'm longing for a little stability and a little bit more permanence, I think that just the opposite is true. I think I'm going to want to be a traveler for the rest de ma vie.

I would like to visit:
Asia: Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Beijing
South America (especially after reading "The Lacuna", talk about a beautiful portrait of Mexico)
Switzerland
Spain: Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Malaga
France: Nice, anywhere in Provence, Marseilles, more Paris, anywhere in Bordeaux, anywhere in Brittany, more Normandy, anywhere in Alsace Lorraine (man, I love this country)

What about you guys? Where do you want to visit?

american dream

Blackberry bushes in the backyard
A white picket fence
Children running through the halls
Deep blue shutters
A room full of books
PhD diploma on the wall.

vous ne risquez pas d'être un légume

Sometimes it feels like French is a private club for members who are either from there or served missions there, and I will never gain membership. I take the classes, I read the Book of Mormon in French, I talk with my mom, but this is not enough. This will not make me fluent. And I keep ignoring that and pushing it aside, but one day it will become very embarrassing for me to say I was a French minor and yet can't carry on a thoughtful conversation with someone. (I mean, I could carry on a conversation about food, or airports, or families, or school subjects, or house-related things "la chaise est verte!", but anything that actually matters? describing situations and events? politics? religion? okay, actually I've upped my gospel vocab a lot by reading scriptures in French, but I couldn't bear my testimony or anything. Maybe. Have yet to try.)

Usually I assuage my concerns with the desperate hope that one day I will get to France and I will stay there for a while and I will become fluent if it kills me! And usually I'm fine after I think that to myself.

But every so often reality is shoved in my face in my inability to understand French tourists in San Francisco and I want to cry. It's impractical, it's expensive, and what exactly would I do? I don't think my language skills are where they should be for an internship, I travel with the ballroom team at the same time as all the French study abroads, and I really don't have anyplace to go.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean for this post to be one long whiny rant. I'm a little discouraged.
Don't take me too seriously. After all is said and done I still believe it will all happen. Somehow.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

is it written in the stars?*

Today I woke up after having two very depressing dreams.

1. I was in the lab and all these random people were there too, and they were all insinuating I was fat.
2. I went to watch the team perform at some performing arts festival, and I realized as they were all standing on stage warming up that I was in all of the numbers they were dancing (west coast, pirates, latin medley) and Lee just didn't want me to dance. Then I realized that this meant I wasn't being placed on the Blackpool team.

I woke up giggling and missing my chemistry friends because it was so ridiculous and because my lab dream featured some of them (now I can't remember who), respectively.

Soooooooooooo. Now I want to have a chem party. And start working out with Kellie.

Happy Saturday everyone!

*Aida!!! So into song lyrics/titles as post titles right now...

That was supposed to be much more enjoyable

Sometimes I'm glad that dreams are just dreams.
I don't really remember what my rational was when I decided this morning to sleep through religion. Was it worth it? Ummm...nope. I spent the next hour dreaming with a feeling of total creepiness and darkness. It wasn't even that anything really scary happened, everything just felt so off and unsettling...I was babysitting Meg's Russian cousins (pretty sure she doesn't have any...)while they moved all of their stuff into an elevator in the dance building on campus so they could move here, but no one was coming back so I could leave and go to lunch with Kim and Jordan, and then I was rushing to a ballroom comp at some high school where it was like small groups competiting on the floor at the same time (one guy and two girls, three girls together, etc). Our event was coming up, so I ran to get changed into the black latin dress I'm going to buy, but I couldn't decide which fishnets to put on- black or caramel? Then I realized the window was wide open, there were no blinds, and some guy with a camera was sitting in his car. I went somewhere else to get changed and realized I needed to go to my car, which when I got to it had some creepo guy in it who told me I had a nice car (well that's for surely a lie, I love my car and all, but it's like 10 years old), and then told me he was taking it. So I grabbed my coat and math book (I'm not taking math) from the front seat and watched him drive away. I went to tell my parents and they were basically like, "Hmmm, that's too bad." Then, I was someplace with arches that was supposed to be the chemistry building and I was handed a white envelope (that looked exactly like one of those dance scholarship envelopes) that told me I got a chemistry scholarship and that I got a locker on campus in some building I'd never heard of. That was happy and all until I found out my friend got one too, but not for as much, and she kept asking me how much mine was, and I didn't want to tell her because I didn't want her to feel bad...
And I wrote this immediately upon waking.
Apparently I am:
afraid of being locked into responsibilities
anxious about nationals and fishnets
worried about my car
nervous about scholarships

Hmm. Pretty much sums it up.

just kidding. I'm not that worried about my car. The fishnets though, that decision is freaking me out.

Ward Prayer Nightmare

So my new calling in my singles ward (not sure how to punctuate that phrase: single's ward? singles' ward?) is being on the ward prayer committee. Apparently it makes me more anxious than I thought...
Last night I had a dream that I went to ward prayer and had forgotten to assignment anyone to do anything, so I had to come up with a spiritual thought. I asked the people who host it if I could use the set of nice leather scriptures to come up with a thought and the lady was like, "No, I don't think so," and then she went off to find some scriptures that were crappy enough for me to use. Twenty minutes later she comes back without any scriptures and starts rummaging around in the entertainment center where I'd found the leather scriptures. She pulls out a piece of paper with some quotes on it and says, "Here, why don't you use this?" I don't see how I have any other choice so I start reading off this quote by some guy who I'm not even sure is LDS because he's talking about how we're more important than bubble gum. I glance down and the quote below it is by Christina Aguilera. Anyway, I'm trying my best to tie this into the gospel, but she keeps chiming in with her own insight about the quote. Finally it's over with and I have someone say the prayer and everyone can leave. Oh, except for the hosts' creepy son (they don't actually have a son who lives with them...I made him up in my dream) who's wearing a guitar around his back and won't let me back away from the refreshment table (the neck of the guitar is in the way). I finally push through, but he pulls me back with that stupid guitar, smiling like an idiot, probably thinking, "heh heh, I'm so good with girls." He puts the guitar on me, and I'm like, "ok, I'm getting out of here." So I go to leave and my car is gone, but my mom is there to walk me home. That was it. Oh and Becky and Jeff were there for some reason, and they wouldn't pay attention so I was really mad at them. And then Kim was like, "Katie, are you ok? You look like you're going to cry." And I felt like I was going to cry.
It was super bizarre. And I actually like being ward prayer coordinator. The people who host it are really nice and would never forbid me from using their scriptures to give a spiritual thought...at least I hope so...I've never actually asked them if I could...