you've got to be kidding...

What you see in the picture is not a clever Photoshop trick. It is actually SNOWING here! What the hell! It's only October! On the bright side, if it's snowing it's completely justifiable to turn the heat on.

I finally finished my wicked long midterm paper, it ended up being 24 pages long! I got my one day of zoning out, and now I have to start on my next paper due Thursday. One of my friends said "I think we'll be glad that we DID this [graduate school], but not that we're DOING this".

Sidebar: Is anyone else mad that the movie version of "Queen of the Damned" combines "The Vampire Lestat" and "Queen of the Damned" into one thing, and also add some stuff that never happened in the book? Also, I think Lestat's singing voice is actually Jonathan Davis from Korn. ew.

Whatever... off the the worst job ever! That's right, Pier 1!

a perfect storm

Just like I promised, we are getting spanked by Wilma and another storm that have come together to form "a perfect storm". Right now it is raining like an MF, and the wind is gusting at 44mph. Parts of the siding on the house next to us arecoming off, but it was kind of an old crappy house anyways. Ah, my first nor'easter... I think i'll stay inside today.

french toast

Rachele and I went to Paris this weekend! Here we are riding the Vespa we rented. You can see the Eiffel Tower in the background. Tom Cruise was there proposing to Katie Holmes, we ran them over. Ok so I'm totally lying. I could see Gem's face turning red with anger that Imight have come to France and didn't stop by to visit her :).

We took this picture at the Kotex feminine products booth at the Regatta. The pictures of the actual race looked like tiny ants rowing a boat, so I opted for Paris instead. The Regatta was cool, we basically singed up for a bunch of free stuff. Rachele won 100 free skymiles from Delta, which means nothing. I won a luggage tag, which means even less. The rain has come back, and we're going to get spanked by hurricane Wilma tomorrow, yuck. But it's mid-term week so it's better that i'm inside working on my super-involved paper anyways.

We didn't end up going back to the pumpkin-lighting thing because it was pouring down rain. This weekend is Halloween, and I am still sans costume. I'm sure i'll figure something out. It's only a few more weeks until I can stick it to Pier 1 and never ever go back. They think I am a slave or something - I don't like it. I'd much rather be hanging out with my favorite ladies in the Provost's office. Ok back to work...

All the leaves are brown...

Ok so the leaves aren't exactly brown, but that's the only fall-ish related song lyric that I could think of.

This afternoon Kat and I went down to Boston Common to carve pumpkins. Tomorrow is the big pumpkin festival on the common, and the goal is to break the world record of consecutively lit jack-o-lanterns. Last year there were 16, 452 lit and they didn't break the record. They are going to light them tomorrow night, so I think we're going to go down and see that.

There was a huge tent with a few hundred people helping out. It was kind of like an assembly line - some people cut the tops, some got the guts out, some carved. Kat and I gutted and carved the pumpkins (the messy job). Between the two of us we contributed 6 or 7 :).

There's a picture of me and one of my little pumpkins. They had us carving hearts into them because those are going on this huge scaffolding thingy, it's going to look really cool all lit-up.There were pumpkins pretty much everywhere, it was quite enjoyable.

Oh! So for the past month or so our living room furniture consisted of two lawn chairs and a kind of recliner type thing. We've been debating the futon purchase but we're all to cheap to do it. While Kat and I were walking to the T we saw this futon outside of a used furniture store. We went in and talked to the guy and he told us he'd knock down the price and deliver it to our house if we'd pay cash and take it today. To make a long story short, it's now happily sitting in our living room! Yea! This also bodes well for Zach and other future visitors who won't have to sleep on the floor! Tomorrow Rachele and I are going to see the Head of the Charles Regatta, so I hope it doesn't rain!

This is the gigantic scaffolding with some of the pumpkins on it - all of the heart shaped ones. I'll put a picture on later of it all lit up!

In other news I got a sweet deal on my plane tickets for X-mas time, so ya'll (yes i just said ya'll) had better plan on spending some quality time - I'll be home for about three weeks.








There's Kat carving one of her pumpkins :)

"nothing lasts forever in the cold [October] rain"

(I think if you can name all of the songs that I pull my blog titles from, you should get a prize. I think Pat may be the only one who is up to the challenge.)

Oh yes, it's been raining like a MF for about a week or so now in Beantown. I did a little coloring (to the right) because that's all my frazzled brain can handle after spending my time buried in journal articles.

It was freezing in our apartment so we had a roommate meeting about whether or not to turn on the heat. After a unanimous vote in favor of warmth, the chicks belows us turned on their heat. Many of you may remember from science class that heat rises, so hurray! I'm warm and I don't have to pay for it, rock!

I was supposed to go dancing last night so I reluctantly dragged myself in the rain to the other side of the world to meet with some nice ladies from my program. Being on the other side of the world, I had to make sure I got home before the buses and T stopped running. I got to dance a total of zero hours and zero minutes because the DJ showed up late and I had to leave, bummer.

Lots of people have been asking about my classes. I really like them and am connecting with the material. I read this stuff and think "wow, that happened to me!". I think that besides cultivating my mind it's helping me to deal with my own health issues, and that is always great. Someday i'm going to write down my disease story and make millions upon millions of dollars. This can happen as soon as people aren't afraid to talk about their colons :). Back to work!

My first visitor!

I have just learned from a very reliable source (aka the man himself), that ZACH IS COMING TO BOSTON! He's coming a few days before I leave to come home, so we are flying back to Ohio together! I'll be spending the next few weeks planning all kinds of fun and interesting things for us to do. Some ideas: sneaking into the Harvard library, throwing a bag of Tazo tea into the Boston Harbor and taking obscene pictures at the plethora of historical sites in the city. This series of grand events will of course be documented on both of our blogs (check out: Malaysian Madness).

It will also be Harry Potter movie weekend when he's here and we WILL be attending HP themed events. Maybe Harry and the Potters will play again....

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!! Zach, you just made my week!

my blog it is a-changin'

I changed my blog around so it looks a little prettier. I'm going to go tour about some more when it stops raining and I'll be able to put some more pictures of the ci-tay up. I don't hate Boston, I swear. I was just a little homesick last week - but i'm over it thanks to the help of some good friends (you know who you are :). The Red Sox lost on Friday (haha) so I got to watch my football game on Saturday night. LOST was also on later that night so I caught most of it.

This week i'll be spending most of my time writing a huge paper about media messages and my disease. It's amazing to think that a million people in the U.S. have some form of IBD but most people don't even know what it is! If you have some time to spare and want to educate yourself about Ulcerative Colitis, check out the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation website. Then TALK TO ME ABOUT IT! I'll persuade you to join my cause :). I get Thursday night off of class because it's Yom Kippur, holla! Also, I need a good book to read so give me recommendations.

what i hate about boston.

Sometimes a girl just wants something that reminds her of home. Am I a little homesick...YES. What would I be doing on a typical Wednesday night at 9:00pm? I'd be with Jason, Elaine and VA watching LOST. Since I don't get home from class until 10pm on Wednesdays now, I have to tape the damn show and talk to them about it later. Tonight I came home from class, turned on the video, and what do I find? LOST? NO! The f*cking RED SOX game! Arrgggh! The icing on the cake to an annoying day.

As much as it's the little things that I sometimes enjoy about living here the tiny things also aggravate the HELL out of me. We can also never get the OSU football games. We're not in the right "region". I could care less about baseball, I want my football. I cannot WAIT to get home for Thanksgiving where I can see my family and friends. Damn, am I grumpy today or what!

Voldemort can't stop the rock

This morning I went and saw the sweetest band, "Harry and the Potters". They are two brothers who sing songs about the Harry Potter books and were introducted to me by Karlie a few years ago. Go to their website, http://www.eskimolabs.com/hp/, listen to the songs, and tell me they aren't hilarious.

To the left is "Harry from the 7th year" or, the older brother. The younger one introduced himself as "Harry from the 4th year" hahaha. Anyways I was highly entertained. Song titles from these boys include "Save Ginny Weasley", "Wizard's Chess" and "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock". They dressed up in the 'Hogwarts' uniform and entertained a crowd of screaming pre-teens wearing capes and waving wands. It was marvelous.