Making great strides in ridiculous things . . .

Several achievements I wish to award gold stars now:

1. I have an awesome coat (Alice!). It's maroon and thin-wale courderoy (how DO you spell that?!) with stencil-like embroidery on the cuffs and back, and it's knee length. I got it for 17 dollars and it fits perfectly and I get at least one compliment a day when I wear it. Today some lady in the checkout line told me she liked it, and after our conversation I'm wondering why Marshall's and St. Vinnie's aren't giving me commissions for all the damn publicity I give them.

2. Though I was very cranky on Sunday morning (no coffee), I had a very nice afternoon with Ben which included walking to the library on a TRULY lovely fall day and checking out all the cool books there, and then going home and making steaks on the George Foreman grill and mashed potatoes boiling in the bag. And instead of going downstairs to meet his neighbors, I curled up in the blanket and took a nap. I don't know, it doesn't seem like much, but it was just so delightful and relaxing, and I got to talk to Ben, which is more delightful still.

3. I went to a different fitness class, embarassingly titled "Hip Hop Mania" which turned out to not only be really fun, but also to be far superior to that damn cardio class. We were all far too white do be dancing hip-hop, we ladies, but we laughed and laughed at that fact, and now today I feel like an 80 year old because of all the sore muscles, but I'll go again soon I think. Bonus points for spending time with grad students I don't see often.

4. I was starting to get QUITE panicky about not doing much in lab (I have ideas for experiments, but most of the techniques involved are new to me, so I don't even know where to begin). After some stressing, I just made myself e-mail one of the post-docs in the lab to see if I could pick her brain a bit, and so we're scheduled to work a bit wednesday afternoon on exciting things! Science in action!

5. Yes, I love me. And one of my favorite things about getting to hang out in my brain is that I continually want to find a way to enjoy even lame things. I rented Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows. Yes, I know it's supposed to be crap. And the initial 30 minutes of it were utterly hilarious. But I must admit, the situations got to me and I found the ending pretty novel. I think it suffered from being compared to the original, which was a completely different format (and sublimely awesome). I also really appreciated that they never flinched from violence. Seriously, if you you're going to show people being ritualistically sacrificed, you really ought to show it. The movie got its edge near the middle, and kept it decently. Also, a non-annoying goth girl was pretty unexpected.