I retract my previous statement about my theater teacher.
After my SECOND C+ on a paper for Theatre class, I decided I'd had enough. I emailed him, politely demanded a minute of his time, and met with him today after class. And it turns out, he didn't grade either of my papers. His overworked TA did, But only after grading a succession of papers written by the 80 percent of the class that doesn't enjoy paying attention.
While I sympathize with her plight, I don't believe it's too much to ask for her to avoid taking it out on my paper.
My teacher, formerly believed to be the culprit, regraded my latest paper and gave me an A-! Alas, the statute of limitations has passed on the first paper. Oh well; bygones. I was planning on doing an extra credit project anyway.
For the past few days, I've been wondering what to be for Halloween. Campus, not surprisingly, is currently overrun with a bevvy of slutty police-women, slutty fire-women, slutty French maids, and even a slutty Statue of Liberty. Not joking. Wish I was. So I contemplated a little irony-- dressing up as a plain old prostitute. No one would think to guess that one! You know, shake it up a little.
There was no way I could carry it off. I, thankfully, am simply not prostitute material. I am now the Wolf, after eating Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood. I have a giant fat belly and am carrying a red coat. I have hired a large, burly friend of mine to chase after me for a portion of the evening with a large axe.
Haha. Just kidding about the axe. But seriously, wouldn't that be hilarious?
Honestly, I haven't decided yet. It's a toss up between 1. The wolf idea (sans lumberjack), 2. Just plain old Little Red Riding Hood, and 3. Betty Boop. Ideas?
What's your costume?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Chocolate Cake
On an ordinary Sunday night, my good friend Quanta and I decided to get together to do some baking. Originally we had the famous Wood donuts in mind, but realized (at about 3 that afternoon) that we wouldn't have time to let the dough rise. So instead, we decided to make a chocolate cake the likes of which are seldom seen.
These are the chronicles of our quest. Please to enjoy.
Our first stop, after finding a recipe, was to go to King Soopers to buy chocolate chips. At the Self-Checkout, I was informed by my counterpart that we would be paying entirely in change (mostly pennies), since she needed to get rid of all her U.S currency before moving. We spent the next 2 minutes or so hastily shoving as much change at a time as we could manage into the tiny little coin slot. We ended just ONE PENNY short of our total, but the cashier let us go anyway! The long and short of it: we paid for $5.42 worth of baking supplies with $5.41 worth of change. Which, as Quanta pointed out, is basically like getting it for free!Once at my house, the baking commenced. Despite a small fiasco with an egg shell that was recovered later in the baking process, cake making went off without a hitch and for the next 30 minutes we retired from the kitchen for a photo shoot, as is customary with most professional bakers.
After taking it out of the oven...
We tried our best to stave off impatience and impending starvation while the layers cooled. You can see the yummy homemade frosting sitting on the burner behind the cake. It still amazes me that everything was from scratch.Finally, it was done! The picture of the entire thing is lost, somehow, but let me tell you-- it was a thing to behold. We frosted between the layers and everything. I'm tearing up just thinking about how beautiful it was...
And how delicious...
Such is the legend of two cakebakers and a dog named Gus.
High Five!
The End.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Getting ready for the day
How quickly blog addiction takes hold of a young, fickle mind. This morning I got up and immediately felt the urge to blog.
Quanta and I had a momentous evening, and later today there will be pictures and stories to follow. But I want to write about something else just now. I didn't feel I could confidently go on with my morning without the catharsis, however trivial, of thinking out loud.
You were born to be one specific person. You were created in a specific way and certain things were put into your path so that your subsequent reaction would make you who you are today. It is inconvenient, at the very least, to ignore the person that has been created by your years of experience on this planet in order to spare yourself the pain of growing up a little. College has made this deliberate ignorance difficult if not impossible for me, as I believe it was supposed to. But it's still scary to grow sometimes, and often it seems easier to pretend that you're still too young to have to worry about profound personal growth, and to simply continue to coast along until you find yourself behind the curve and in more pain than you would be if you had confronted yourself honestly in the first place. I am ashamed to say that my experience with this little charade has cost me already in this journey away from high school and the familiar.
But God is talking. When you listen, he talks, and he has smart things to say. The pain of growing up is nothing compared to the pain of staying inside a self that is too small for you.
Christ looks after us at every instant. The small price we pay in return is to trust that he will not let us fail.
Sorry if this is a little disjointed-- I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I still haven't quite found the right words. Maybe this is just a draft.
Quanta and I had a momentous evening, and later today there will be pictures and stories to follow. But I want to write about something else just now. I didn't feel I could confidently go on with my morning without the catharsis, however trivial, of thinking out loud.
You were born to be one specific person. You were created in a specific way and certain things were put into your path so that your subsequent reaction would make you who you are today. It is inconvenient, at the very least, to ignore the person that has been created by your years of experience on this planet in order to spare yourself the pain of growing up a little. College has made this deliberate ignorance difficult if not impossible for me, as I believe it was supposed to. But it's still scary to grow sometimes, and often it seems easier to pretend that you're still too young to have to worry about profound personal growth, and to simply continue to coast along until you find yourself behind the curve and in more pain than you would be if you had confronted yourself honestly in the first place. I am ashamed to say that my experience with this little charade has cost me already in this journey away from high school and the familiar.
But God is talking. When you listen, he talks, and he has smart things to say. The pain of growing up is nothing compared to the pain of staying inside a self that is too small for you.
Christ looks after us at every instant. The small price we pay in return is to trust that he will not let us fail.
Sorry if this is a little disjointed-- I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I still haven't quite found the right words. Maybe this is just a draft.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The birth of another distraction from homework
In an attempt to be as cool as Emily (or any given member of the Wood family, really) and Quanta, and at the behest of certain aforementioned extremely cool people, I have decided to commence on a blogging journey of my very own. And in honor of this, my inaugural blogural, I have decided to share with you all a very special story.
Once upon a time, I took a class called Introduction to Theatre. It was taught by a magical man named Mr. Blush, who was, at one time in his life, the lucky recipient of a Happy Meal containing not a toy, but a degree in Technical Theater and a teaching license. I wrote a paper for this magical man, and he did not like it. Not one bit. Despite Scotch-tape-like adherence to his guidelines, my paper failed to please him. Thus the first formal paper I had ever written in college met its demise at the hands of a spastic little bald man with a red Bic.
Fast forward to the present day. I'm working on what will be my third big assignment for Baldy McMeanPants. This is an assignment on Hamlet, which I'm currently reading, and I'm stalling on actually writing the paper for fear of it being trashed like the first one. I happen to love Hamlet. It is one of my favorite plays. And the prospect of writing a paper on such a beloved subject, that will almost certainly be red-inked to shreds when I get it back, is almost too much to bear. My only comfort is that this paper will probably not affect my A, since I'm one of about 15 in his class of 137 that actually pays attention.
On the bright side of today, I ate some delicious breakfast. For the first time in a while, I did not have to grab an apple on the way out the door-- I got to have french toast at one of my favorite restaurants, a little Cajun place called Lucile's. They make it with this amazing french bread, and they serve it with their homemade brown sugar maple syrup. Everything you order at this place comes with a giant, piping hot, homemade buiscuit. For your biscuit adorning pleasure, they also provide strawberry/rhubarb jam, orange and red pepper marmalade, and apple butter (all incredibly tasty and, yet again, homemade). It was beyond delicious.
Since college started, I've become increasingly grateful for being able to indulge in the occasional nap, an hour on the grass reading Hamlet, or the extremely rare real breakfast. The things you love are somehow so much more enjoyable when tempered with everyday life. A quick pace makes slowing down, even just a little bit, that much more enjoyable.
Once upon a time, I took a class called Introduction to Theatre. It was taught by a magical man named Mr. Blush, who was, at one time in his life, the lucky recipient of a Happy Meal containing not a toy, but a degree in Technical Theater and a teaching license. I wrote a paper for this magical man, and he did not like it. Not one bit. Despite Scotch-tape-like adherence to his guidelines, my paper failed to please him. Thus the first formal paper I had ever written in college met its demise at the hands of a spastic little bald man with a red Bic.
Fast forward to the present day. I'm working on what will be my third big assignment for Baldy McMeanPants. This is an assignment on Hamlet, which I'm currently reading, and I'm stalling on actually writing the paper for fear of it being trashed like the first one. I happen to love Hamlet. It is one of my favorite plays. And the prospect of writing a paper on such a beloved subject, that will almost certainly be red-inked to shreds when I get it back, is almost too much to bear. My only comfort is that this paper will probably not affect my A, since I'm one of about 15 in his class of 137 that actually pays attention.
On the bright side of today, I ate some delicious breakfast. For the first time in a while, I did not have to grab an apple on the way out the door-- I got to have french toast at one of my favorite restaurants, a little Cajun place called Lucile's. They make it with this amazing french bread, and they serve it with their homemade brown sugar maple syrup. Everything you order at this place comes with a giant, piping hot, homemade buiscuit. For your biscuit adorning pleasure, they also provide strawberry/rhubarb jam, orange and red pepper marmalade, and apple butter (all incredibly tasty and, yet again, homemade). It was beyond delicious.
Since college started, I've become increasingly grateful for being able to indulge in the occasional nap, an hour on the grass reading Hamlet, or the extremely rare real breakfast. The things you love are somehow so much more enjoyable when tempered with everyday life. A quick pace makes slowing down, even just a little bit, that much more enjoyable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
