aaaah, spring

so i complain about my strange work schedule to anyone who will listen, but this time of year, i secretly really enjoy it. i work sundays 5-9pm {that part i will ALWAYS hate}, monday-thursday 1-9pm, and friday 8:30-1pm. in addition to the fact that my weekend starts early always a plus, i love my monday-thursday schedule because it allows me to take advantage of two things i love:

a) a quiet office and

b) mornings!

i get soooo much more work done on my crazy schedule, because i'm not constantly dealing with a barrage of phone calls, e-mails, and visits from co-workers and students. also, i don't have to listen to/deal with/look at tg. bonus! i get 3-4 hours alone in my office every night and it goes by so quickly. also, i can online shop and play web sudoku without fear of my boss coming in behind me and surprising me.

i am also one of those super annoying, perky morning people. an ex-boyfriend who i've remained close friends with and i still believe that the underlying reason we couldn't make it work is that he is basically a vampire and doesn't really become functional about 2pm, whereas i am up by 5:30am, ready to roll. with crazy schedule, i can wake up early, do a work-out, take the puppy boy for a walk, make myself a nice breakfast AND lunch, and laze about the house or in the yard until 1pm.

or do what i did today: catch up on movies. i joined the year 2009 and finally watched slumdog millionaire. i'm no film critic, so i can't speak to whether or not it deserved all those oscars, but i loved this little movie. i'm not sure i'll ever watch it again, because the abject poverty those children live in is very real and very upsetting, but it was worth sitting through it for the last 30 seconds of the movie. when he kisses her scar, i. MELTED. literally, just became a crying pool of yoga pants and self-tanner. have y'all seen it? what did you think?

happy college friday, buttercups!

how could i forget?!

in my new hair product fervor, i completely forgot it's earth day! since there is a bleeding heart liberal dirt hippie carefully hidden beneath my j.crew blonde faux straight hair exterior, this is an exciting holiday {not really on the excitement part, but i like an excuse to celebrate. mini chile relleno casseroles and albarino tonight! par-tay!}

in honor of earth day, instead of boring you with anecdotes about all the things i do to stop global warming and shrink my carbon footprint, i thought i would share some pretty pictures :) these are the lovely azaleas in my parents' yard. they just bloomed this weekend, and as you can see, my daddy has quite the green thumb. yet another sign that spring is here!

a retraction

i would like to extend my apologies to the hair gods i bitched about yesterday. it turns out that this new smoothing creme is actually quite good. it made my hair super soft and i'm sure i'm the only one who will notice this it made my hair look more naturally i just rolled out of bed looking this fabulous straight, as opposed to my normal faux beat into submission straight. maybe they're trying to throw me a bone? either way, i can't stop touching my hair today because it's so shiny and soft!

i'm still mourning the loss of thermasilk, though. don't think you're back in my good graces just yet, hair gods. figure out a way to make keratase a) cost less and b) be sold somewhere closer than an hour of lexington and we will be in business.

toodles!

dear hair gods,

it is apparent that you hate me. first off, you cursed me with naturally curly hair. not pretty sjp, emmy rossum, nicole kidman curls. white trash, limp, frizzy curls. nice. it seemed like you felt bad about that since you blessed me with a beautiful platinum blonde color, but alas, that started to turn more of a mousy straw blonde halfway through college. so yeah...thanks for the hundreds of dollars i spend every other month to return to my childhood color.

but lately, you've taken it WAY too far. it took me YEARS to perfect my hair routine...searching for the right shamp and conditioner, the perfect product, and investing in insanely expensive hairdryers and straighteners...but i finally had it down pat. so i thought. first off, you took thermasilk off the shelves. i had been obsessed ever since an allure editor said that after testing dozens of expensive shamps and conditioner, this was the best. it smelled so nummy and made my hair so pretty and soft, especially given the obscene amount of abuse i give it with my previously mentioned expensive heat-using equipment.

i'm STILL looking for a new shamp and conditioner to love, but nothing has come close.

and now....oh, you went too far. you have taken my john frieda frizz ease straight ahead straightening spray off the market. you replaced it with a 'smoothing creme'. wtf? i don't want that!! i want my spray back!! i drove to THREE different places this afternoon looking for that precious silver bottle and it was nowhere to be found. i am now TERRIFIED that tomorrow morning when i do my hair, it will be confused and puff up as a result.

so, hair gods, it is on like donkey kong. you will not beat me. i WILL find the perfect shamp, conditioner, and now straightening product. you may have won the battle, but i will win the war.

i'm on a roll!

a cooking roll, that is.

one of the things {among many} that i'm trying to be better at is not eating out as much. it's not that i don't enjoy it...i'm a major foodie and dining at great restaurants is one of life's greatest pleasures at least in my book. but here in teeny tiny lexington, there are no restaurants that can be considered great and only two or three that can be considered good. and those two or three restaurants are a bit too pricey for daily dining, so i always end up getting take out from some place depressing and unhealthy like ruby tuesday's. blech. since i would much rather have a tiny waistline and spend the money on these beauties, i've decided to cook more.

my current plan is to make one to two recipes per week. that usually makes enough food for me to have dinner at least two-three weeknights. i normally end up out of town or going out with friends on the weekend. last week it was my nummy thai food. tonight it was this bit of yumminess. i used tilapia instead of flounder, since flounder isn't a sustainable seafood. i made angel hair pasta instead of rice, because i don't like plain rice. and i roasted asparagus instead of spinach. i honestly could not tell that this was a lightened version of a piccata sauce. it was that good. it made enough sauce and pasta for about three servings, so i'll saute my other tilapia filet tomorrow for round two.

now if only i can conquer my chronic boring lunches....i will pretty much be perfect.

happy monday!

protests, be damned!

so i realize this makes me sound like a totally superficial, western hemisphere brat but oh well. all these headlines about the protests in thailand have given me a serious craving for thai food. since i live in a teeny town and the nearest thai restaurant is a good 65 miles away, i took matters into my own hands.

my first attempt at making homemade thai food was last year and it was a DISASTER. i used a rachael ray recipe and i should've known better. i can't stand her and her moronic abbrevs {evoo, sammies, etc.}, so why should her food be any different?  this time i picked a chef whose smokin’ hot bod recipes i really love: dave lieberman.  i made his spicy coconut shrimp with mango salsa and lime jasmine rice. nom nom {bonus points if you know what that's from}.  plus i had enough leftover for two lunches. bonus!

enjoy your sexy jewish chef fix and happy weekend, chickadees!

neVer forgeT

You see signs like that all around the area I live in, but if you are from SW VA or in any way connected with the VA Tech community, you don't need a sign to jog your memory.

The morning of April 16, 2007 was like any other day at UVA. Beautiful weather. As I walked out the door that morning, one of my housemates mentioned that there had been a shooting on a Virginia college campus. Neither of us were particularly worried. We would've known by then if the shooting was at our own school, and the news just said that there had been some injuries. I went on my way to class.

About an hour later, my cell phone started ringing like crazy. I excused myself from class when I saw that all of the calls were from my dad, which was unusual. I called him back and all he said was, "Is Joe OK?" I had no clue who or what he was talking about. He asked if I had heard about the shooting. I said yes...C had said something about it this morning but we didn't think it was a big deal. He got very quiet. My dad, a very proud graduate of Virginia Tech, cried for the first time in front of me. Through his tears, he told me that a gunman had locked himself in a classroom building and opened fire. We didn't know how many and we didn't know who.

I know that for everyone in the country, this news in and of itself was tragic and terrifying enough. For me, it was even worse. I grew up in a town about 45 minutes outside of Blacksburg. At least 60% of my high school went on to Virginia Tech. Almost all of my high school friends and many childhood friends were students there. Including my childhood best friend/college housemate's little brother, Joe.

The rest of the day is a blur. I didn't make it back to my classroom until later that night to collect my bags. I immediately went home and started making phone calls, e-mails, Facebook searches....anything I could think of. Slowly I started to hear back from people letting me know they were OK. But as the day went on, I still hadn't heard from my housemate. I will never forget that feeling of helplessness. Finally she walked in the door that night. She obviously knew what I was thinking, because all she said was, "he's OK." We both collapsed on the couch and started sobbing.

There are very few friends who weren't directly affected. One friend's dad was killed, another lost a sister. One of the guys who was murdered had been baptized by my grandfather. One friend who grew up in Blacksburg didn't come back to school for the rest of the year. That kind of tragedy was too much to comprehend. Even now, two years later, I have a hard time writing this. So many precious lives were lost that day and to such senseless evil.

Last week, they reopened Norris Hall. It will house a Center for Peace and be the headquarters for a new major/minor offering in conflict resolution. My dad doesn't like to talk about 4.16.07, but he e-mailed me an article about the reopened Norris Hall. All he said was, "this is as it should be."

Please keep the friends and family of the 32 killed, as well as the entire VT community, in your thoughts and prayers today.