Almost freaked me out!

While the trip home to visit my family has been quite enjoyable, there has been a slight hiccup. The other day I was puttering around the house listening to my iPod when suddenly the music stopped. I was fairly sure the battery wasn't low, but went to check out what had happened. When I picked it up from the desk, the screen was a bit wonky. I tried restarting it and got a battery warning. I tried to plug it in to charge it up and check to make sure a low battery was the only problem. The little apple logo would come up and I could hear the drive start to spin up, but then it would suddenly stop. The screen would go blank again and then the apple logo would reappear. It did this a couple time before I decided that the drive must have crashed. I am a bit sad about it. I loved my 30 gb iPod. It is the one that I listen to the most as I putter around my apartment as well. I still have my nano, but it has stopped working with my docking speakers, so now I am left with quite the dilemma. How will I cope without the music it would provide me...? In a last ditch effort to save my iPod I plugged into my computer to see what iTunes would do with it. By some miracle it found my iPod and I was able to reformat it to factory settings. It seems to be doing well now, but I was really annoyed for a while there. I am still contimplating getting a larger iPod, as the 30 gb isn't quite enough to hold all my music.

An Early Birthday

My roommate's birthday is the day before mine, so for the last two years we have had a joint birthday party. Due to various schedule issues, we had the party last night. Our friends took us out for sushi, which both of us love, and then we came back to the apartment for chocolate cake. I did have to make the cake myself, but such is life. I had to make sure it was the perfect chocolate cake. We had a lot of fun and my friends got me Guitar Hero World Tour for my wii. I know, I will be wasting my life playing games, but it was a fun day!

Halloween!

I had to work at my internship site this Halloween, which really wasn't that bad because the library closed at 6 pm. I did discover a week or so before Halloween that all of the youth services librarians were going to dress up on Halloween. I decided that I would as well and as I had made a Slytherin scarf not that long ago, I went about making a Hogwarts costume. Most of the clothing was stuff that I already had around, but I knew that it would look better if I had a tie and wand. The wand was easy, I picked it up at a local costume shop. The tie not so easy. I knew you could buy Hogwarts ties online, but didn't have the time, or money, to buy one. I decided to make my own tie decorating a store bought tie. First I thought I would just buy ribbon to create the stripe pattern, but while I could find a gray tie that was the right color, I couldn't find dark green ribbion. Instead of using ribbion, I decided to paint the stripes on, as I could find some cheap acrylic paint that was the right color. So using a $10 tie and $1.50 paint, I made a Slytherin tie. While it isn't perfect, it was good enjoy for the job. For the most part people recognized me, but there was one kid who asked me if I was going to dress up later that day.... not realizing that I was wearing a costume. Ah well.... it was a teenage boy. I doubt he has even seen a Harry Potter movie.

City Hall or Alien Space Ship?

I live near city hall. It is a weird building, but the weirdest part would be the dome, something my roommate and I call R2D2. Really, it is that odd. It is a nice day, so I decided to go out and take some photos of it. Felt the need to document the weirdness. Enjoy! (And yes, it is in the 80s today...)

At the coast

I will admit that I do enjoy living in California. Not only does it not snow, or at least not where I live, I have always loved the beach. Yesterday afternoon my roommate and I decided to drive out to the coast north of Santa Cruz and go for a walk. It seemed like the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. It was a little cool, so I was glad that I had brought a jacket but overall I had a great time. It is nice to spend time enjoying this beautiful world that we have! I will admit that I don't get out of my apartment nearly as much as I would like. All that homework tends to eat up a lot of my time. This was the perfect way to take a break and just enjoy where I live. If you want to see more of the pictures that I took, just use my new flickr page.

Grace in action

I have been playing netball up in San Francisco for about a year now. I was introduced to the sport while I lived in England. As some of you might know, I twisted my ankle quite badly playing netball in England. Anyway, I don't hold the sport responsible for my uncoordinated ways.... and started to play again here. I have really enjoyed playing with the San Francisco Stars and it is probably one of the only reasons I can drag myself out of bed on a Saturday morning. Well, today I proved that I am still quite the klutz. While running for the ball, I was trying to dodge around another player and managed to trip over her instead. I went tumbling and managed to fall face first into the court. I have given myself quite the goose egg on my forehead. Right now it is really quite red, but I wonder what it will look like tomorrow. The most hilarious part about this is that netball is a non-contact sport, but no one would believe it if they saw me today!

Rainy days and clam chowder

I woke up this morning to the sound of the rain falling. I do love the rain. Today was the first day in a very long time that it has rained. I curled up in bed for a bit this morning reading my book and listening to the rain. It was fabulous. Anyway, the first rain always brings out the desire to eat clam chowder. So this afternoon I went to the grocery store so I could pick up some red potatoes and clams so I could make chowder. I sat in my kitchen eating clam chowder and enjoying the cool weather that the rain brought. It had stopped raining by dinner time, but I am hopeful that this will only be the first of many rainy days. While I enjoy living in California because I don't have to deal with the snow, I do wish it would rain more often. Maybe I should move further up the coast where they get more rain. I do have to finish my Master's degree first though...

The obsessive behavior spreads...

During the summer I went and spent some time with my younger sister, Mary. She had recently had a baby girl and I came to play with the baby and help out with her older son. I had a good time while with her... but she spread her obsessive compulsive behavior to me. For years I would tease my sister about how she would fold her plastic bags. It just seemed so obsessive to me, but little did I know that I would become a victim. While there, I helped her fold her bags after we went shopping and when I came home I looked at our big pile of plastic bags. They were taking over the bottom shelf of our pantry. I thought, if I folded these it wouldn't take that much space... so I did. They indeed take up less space on the shelf, but I can no longer mock my sister... I do wonder in the end if the loss of dignity is worth the extra shelf space...

The other obsession that my sister shared with me is her love of Izze drinks. I don't mind that one as much as they really are quite tasty. I don't feel guilty drinking an Izze and it satisfies my carbonation urge. Some meals just call for something sparkling and it is nice to have something that isn't loaded with sugar. They have some really fabulous flavors, but I do think that Blackberry is my favorite. Yum!

All things RED!

So I have discovered that I have an obsession with red kitchen tools. It all started so innocently with the purchase of some cheap red silverware at Target. Next I bought cute red cereal bowls at Wal-Mart. How little did I know that I was sliding down the slippery slope of a red obsession. Before I knew it, I had red mixing bowls, a red cutting board, and a red spatula. The latest purchase is this really cute red colander that I found at Wal-Mart... isn't it just so cute! I couldn't justify buying the big one as my roommate already has a perfectly good white one. But this one is just perfect for draining individual servings of pasta and other such nonsense, so of course I had to buy it. I know, it is quite sad a pathetic... such is my life.

Pietastrophie!

So the other day I having several of my friends over for dinner. For the fun of it I decided to make pie for dessert. I decided to make apple, cherry, and lemon chiffon pie. So to start with I made the crust for the lemon chiffon. After it was done, I put it on top of the stove to cool while I made the apple and cherry pies. Once I got them done, I put them into the oven and got started on the filling for the lemon chiffon. I was being a bit slow, but mostly because I knew I didn't have to hurry, as I had lots of time to spare before everyone came over. Anyway, the when the apple and cherry pies were done, I pulled them out of the oven and put them on the table to cool. Just as I was setting the cherry pie down on the table and I hear this horrible crash. I turn around a there it is waiting for me...
Is it not just a beautiful sight! After staring at it for a while and cursing my silly klutz gene, I sent my roommate off to Target to buy me another pie pan so I could make a new crust. I had already made the filling and I wasn't going to let it go to waste. I made up more pie dough while she was gone and, of course, I was a bit frazzled while making it and ended up making up enough for two single crusts. In the end, I baked up the extra pie dough as cinnamon twists, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Luckily, the pie was a hit and it ended up to be just fine. I now know the top of my stove is a treacherous place... not to be trusted!