inaccurate cross-section of american culture?

i'm hoping that my itunes spying on campus in no way reflects the true musical tastes of our society. finds so far:

ace of bass
iron maiden
vast amounts of kanye west and missy elliott
acdc
blink 182
sugar ray

do people really listen to these on a regular basis?

in other news, i quit my job (well, put in my two weeks' notice).

in other other news, i am attempting to find meaning in finnegans wake for tomorrow's presentation. pray for me.

only in dreams

i am really trying not to say things like "man, i can't wait until we have money so that we can buy a house" or "i really wish that we had money so that we could hire bobby flay to come prepare all of our meals." that's not to say i don't have those thoughts--i do (and you're lying if you say that you don't have them... or you're just a really good person). i usually take those moments to reflect on all the wonderful things in my life, because they are certainly plentiful.


but today i have reached my threshold, and it is time for public coveting. i'm just going to say it: i cannot wait until discount toilet paper is no longer the norm in our home. i fantasize of fancy, soft toilet paper with teddy bear embossing slowly infiltrating all of my normal storage areas, accumulating under the bathroom sink, stacking in the closet, somehow finding its way into my backpack and purse.

let's be honest with each other here: there's no way anyone would ever do this with "super discount ultra-soft" (which in no way resembles actual softnesss). do you recognize the look in his eye? that, my friends is what we call pure joy.

dare to dream. dare to dream.

over the highway and through the suburbs...

my sister and her sweet husband take such good care of jesse and i. i just wanted to take a few minutes to illustrate all of the many reasons we love going to visit them, and why we are so grateful to have such wonderful family in our neck of the woods:

jesse and heath are pretty much best friends forever (0r bff's for those of you who are more with the hip lingo). they both have spiderman t-shirts, like to talk about good guys vs. bad guys, and love their chocolate milk. heath and i were having an intellectual discussion the other day about which members of our family are boys and which ones are girls. after assuring me repeatedly that jesse is most certainly a boy, i decided i would ask the ultimate question: "who do you like better, heath, me or jesse?" he didn't even hesitate. response: "jesse. do you wanna play with my transformers?" it certainly doesn't hurt that heath is the smartest and funniest child in the world (not that i'm biased at all). heath is still the only person i know that can get jesse to genuinely smile in a picture.

not only is heath handsome, but his little brother wade is also particularly charming. i actually dreamt the other night that i had a baby girl whose beauty baffled everyone i encountered. after waking, i realized that the baby girl was really just wade in a dress. however, i think you can see why i can't imagine a more beautiful child.

last weekend, jil and dave let us have jesse's birthday party at their house, and jil helped me make jesse's cake (and by helped, i really mean that she did all the hard work while i stressed about school and then let me help decorate). to top things off, they gave me a present too (hooray for aprons!)! does it get any better?

heath has taught me that being a big brother is really frustrating, but at the end of the day, no matter how many of your toys your little brother may have put in his mouth, you have just got to have fun and help a little guy out.


frankly, the whole place just keeps me grounded. thanks for letting us make your house our second home, guys.

'tis a modern miracle

when your high modernism professor notes the obvious mistakes of your book review (such as forgetting to include significant words like "chapter" in sentences as well as including obviously unread phrases such as "they find display this attraction-repulsion...") and still selflessly gives you the benefit of the doubt. today i give thanks for undeserved good grades.

two weeks down

things survived thus far:


beginning two new jobs
a whole new semester of classes
a parasite
an ambulance ride/ER visit
a terrible chest cold
a deep scrubbing of my entire apartment
two weeks of not touching my husband (see number three)

it seems odd to look at these minor setbacks as accomplishments, but i can't help but feel an eery kinship to this image.

we're gonna make it after all.