resolutions (mostly of the culinary variety)

Well, now that it's February I might as well post my resolutions for this year! Spoiler alert: none of these have to do with dieting or exercise.

1. Bake a ridiculous chocolate + caramel dessert. Some tempting options include: salted caramel budino a la Barbuzzo, chocolate caramel tart, or salted caramel chocolate fudge cake.

2. Make things to go along with main dishes for dinner. I don't know if it's because we don't really love salad or because Aaron detests most vegetables, but this is so hard for me to do. Tips?

3. Vanquish Les Miserables, unabridged (dun dun dun).

4. Go to Boston.

5. Get better at yeast breads. I kind of really want this gorgeous bread knife for my birthday, but...there is never any beautiful artisan bread to be cut in my kitchen, just Shoprite $1/loaf sandwich bread. So 2013, how about we fix this?

6. More consistent/better personal scripture study. I would like to learn more about women in the scriptures and in Church history. I'd also like to go back to reading the Book of Mormon in French (I swear I have lost almost all French skills I ever had).

Cooking, reading, traveling. A good plan for a year if you ask me!

caramel apples

On bad days I like to pull on my warmups and remember that one time I was a Blackpool champion.

(oops, closed my eyes in this shot)

What a seriously awesome summer I had.

Today I was talking with my relief society president, and she asked me what my goals were. And I realized that in the span of three months I'd sort of accomplished every major goal I've had since 5th grade:

Win at Blackpool
Live in France
Get engaged (eventually married in 50 days!!)

So...I'm a pretty lucky girl I guess. And even on days when I cry all through inorganic because of disappointing test scores I've got the best fiancé ever to put me back together and then spend Friday night helping me study for Saturday's test.

Lucky lucky lucky.

girl on fire

I sort of don't have time to write anything because I'm supposed to be finishing up a 15ish page paper that's due tomorrow (I'm on page 4). But, I just couldn't stop myself from sharing this card that I bought as inspiration from the used bookstore next to Zachary's in Berkeley:

Okay. I'm sure as heck going to try.*
391 paper, you are about to get burned!

*When I showed this to my friend Sam he said, "Seems like a dangerous thing to tell a chemist." hahahaha, good thing I'm not a pyromaniac.

Makes the world go round and makes me a little angry

$45 in insufficient funds fees later, and what do you get?

A New Year's Resolution to actually use that beautiful Excel spreadsheet you made six months ago to keep track of money.

AGOIahrnadhah!

More resolution posts to come. What are yours?

in the pages

I have goals for Christmas break so that I do not waste my time. They range from the very silly to the very serious:

Play guitar on Rock Band on expert. On every song.
Watch every episode of Avatar with ballroom people.
Read "Uncertainty".
Read my book for my chemistry girls book club, "Land of the Green Plums".
Memorize the "Ice Ice Baby" rap (yeah CJ!)
Research grad schools.
See "Sherlock Holmes" and "(500) Days of Summer" (again).
Start running SnO2.

What are you doing over your break?

Goalage!!

I've been thinking a bit here and there, and I've come up with some goals for the back to school season. There's nothing too life changing, but little things here and there to make for a more successful semester.

Spiritual:
1. Morning scripture study before I go to class. Now, I have class at 7:00 AM almost every morning, and I love, love, love my sleep so this is going to be particularly difficult. However, I feel that if I make scripture study a bigger priority by doing it first thing in the morning I'll be blessed in other areas in my life where I desperately need some divine help.
2. Weekly temple attendance. I think once the semester starts, and I get a regular schedule going I'll be able to find mornings or late afternoons where this will be possible.

Physical:
1. Running (or some other form of exercise I can stand) twice a week. Yeah, I know that's not really enough to do much for me, but combined with all of my dancing, I think I'll be okay.
2. Practice twice a week for dance. This is cutting back hugely compared to years past, but I think it's all I can handle. I really want to focus on...

Academic:
1. Study at least an hour a day on my own for both Physics 220 and Chem 462. I want to make the Dean's List this semester (which means I have to get straight A's), and I did awful on studying last semester, so....yeah.
2. Work in the lab ten hours a week. Last semester I was working maybe two. Every two weeks. I'd like to up that a bit to earn some money and real life experience!

Social:
1. Know the names of all my neighbors (hahaha, so I'm not the most social person) and go to all the church activities I can. Freshman year I was really bad at this. Sophomore year was improved (anything would've been an improvement), but...I can still do more. I want to know everyone in my ward and make a lot of friends there.
2. Do something for someone else every day. It doesn't have to be big, but just some small act of service. I get busy and stressed and then I spiral down into a busy-stressed-self-pitying vortex, so I'm going to try to avoid that this time around. :)

Random:
1. Keep track of money. I am so, so awful at this. I did however, make up an excel spreadsheet a little while ago to keep track of expenditures. Have I been using it? Well....that's something to work on.

So there you have it. Anyone else have back to school goals?

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.

"Did you give an angry Cuban my home number?"

Well...I was going to post about the Shakespeare Festival, but it's been too long and Jody wrote up a lovely post detailing all of our adventures including, but not limited to, dance parties broken up by sketchy 40 year old men in church parking lots, fun with glue sticks, late night ice cream runs, fake crushes on actors, and fabulous plays. Read all about it here.

In other news...

I forgot how much I love "House" until Josh and I started watching it again, and wow, I love "House". I was so incredibly upset when everyone quit/got fired, and now I can't wait for Chase and Foreman and Cameron to be back (we just started season four). And can I just say that I absolutely love House and Wilson's relationship? And also that I love Wilson? I am almost inspired to be a doctor....almost...except for the whole needles, blood, death, trauma, an excessive amount of schooling, etc. I think I'll stick to chemistry.

Also, all of a sudden I'm very curious about what's going on when I'm at the dentist (got a cavity filled today). What exactly is that big gun thing they stick in your mouth after you've gotten a cavity filled? I'm sure it's supposed to dry/set/whatever the cavity filler, but by what means? What does it do? And what exactly is it in the molding that makes it go from pink to white when it dries? What chemical is that? And how exactly does anesthesia work? How do the chemicals knock out your nerves? And why does your lip feel fat and your face swollen? Anyone secretly a dental hygienist or in dental school who can satisfy my curiosity?

And another thing, after reading this post (thanks Bob!), I am re-inspired to make goals. I found the paper on which I'd written down my goals from last fall (or maybe end of fall semester?), and it turns out I did pretty well. No US national semi-final for ballroom this year, but we were the next couple in for amateur standard. And I pretty much did awful with my financial goals, but I didn't actually try on those ones...anyway, classes start in less than a month, I'm moving into a new apartment (same complex, different building), and I think it would be smart to use this time of change to make new goals for the next year. What those will be I have not yet decided. I'll post something later this week.

Last thing: can we please please please know which numbers we're in next year for team? I'm dying to know if I got any of my requested numbers, and we were supposed to get an email last week telling us and I've been checking my email every few hours just in case it got sent and waiting is making me type sentences with far too many clauses and not enough commas...

Happy Monday everyone :)

Ring out wild bells

Oh man.

So much to say...so little ability to string it all out into sentences right now.

New Year's was fab. I had a great time in Colorado and came home with: a really cute vest from Urban Outfitters, a renewed love for Anthropologie's textiles, $3 signature lotion from Bath and Body Works (best sale I have ever seen there), gratitude for snow plows, and plenty to think about. I finished off the weekend with a trip to IKEA (bought glasses with elephants and penguins on them; they are awesome) and another night out for drinks and gelato. Lycheetinis are interesting. I also got to help Jody move into her new apartment near me! (yay!) It sort of felt like coming full circle since the last time she moved out, I also helped her move in.

I was going to post this up before I left, but I had to catch a flight so I'll post it now:

RESOLUTIONS 2009!!!!

*I really like resolutions since they're sort of like mini goals, and this year I went all out. Categorized and everything:

Academic:

• Spend at least 6 hours in the lab a week
• Study for o chem at least 4 1/2 hours a week (yeah, I know it's still not enough, but that's 4 1/2 specific hours that I'm scheduling in my planner every week, not to be pushed aside for anything)
• Get more information about French internships and start looking into what I need to do to get one for summer '10
  

Spiritual:

• Do my visiting teaching!!
• Go to the temple once a week
• Find a way to do service on a regular basis

Physical:

• Restrict eating candy, baked goods, etc to Fridays and holidays (which includes my birthday :))
• Practice 4 times a week....with or without a partner :)
• Treadmill once a week (also not really enough, but I just don't have enough hours in the day with all that o chem, physics, french, and o chem lab studying I'm going to be doing because...

I am getting good grades this semester!! Not just "good enough to barely be able to keep my scholarship" like this semester. Good grades as in a solid A in o chem and French (which I should've had this semester if I hadn't been so lazy in the homework...really though, 6 oral exercises every day? Ugh. It's so obnoxious to everyone around me to speak French to myself, so the only place I can do them is at home, but I'm never home...anyway...I'm a little bitter about that one...)

I love having the opportunity to start over, to do better, to fix past mistakes. Here's to the best semester yet. Happy New Year everyone!

Plans

Dropping out of spring term has yet to give me the relief I sought because the burden of homework and tests has been replaced by the fear that I will never find a more convenient time to take chem 227. Oh well, what's done is done. To help forget that I may have just made a huge mistake, I need to keep myself busy, so here's what I'm going to be doing with my life this summer:

I want to wake up every morning and go running. Anyone care to join me? I went this morning and you know what, the junior high is not as far away from my house as I remember. Going to college and walking everywhere has greatly changed my definition of "far away."

I'm going to spend way more time in the lab. Instead of a couple hours every day, I want to be in there at least 6.

I'm going to keep TAing for Brent twice a week. It'll be good to get up early a couple every now and then.

I think I'm going to either go to institute or keep up with my New Testament reading as if I were still in the class.

I want to practice cabaret every day (hope that's ok with you Eddie!) and by myself every day as well. I also want to go sign up for conditioning or pilates in the dance training room, plus alternate taking lessons with Brent and Kirstyn by myself every other week.

I should do something to keep up my chemistry and my French...not quite sure how I'll do that, but I'll come up with something.

I'm going to take vacations. I'm going to California with my family and then on a California/Mexico short cruise. I'm also planning a bit of a road trip to California with my friends. Plus, I might be going to Lake Powell....? Maybe...

Anyway, there you have it folks. Voici l'ete que je desire. (blogging in French! hmm, there's an idea...) This summer is going to be awesome, and I am going to forgive myself for being rash and lazy. :)

Never tell me the odds.

Goals:

Keep that darn scholarship.
Go to bed by 11:00 every weeknight this week.
Do 50 crunches every night.
Go running at least twice.
Read through every chapter in my math book on which I'm being tested.
Get cracking at my chem text book as well.
Ace my math test.

Maintain my sanity.
Be happy. :)