cravings?

i made a post yesterday(?) about what my cravings have been recently. making that post led me to googling dr pepper jelly beans for a longer time than is ever necessary when craving a candy.

but today i was in a mall. (a huge one! with ramps and mezzanine levels. it was crazy!) i came across a candy store, and it hit me! they probably have individual bins of individual jelly belly jelly bean flavors!!!!! holy moley was i right! look at the haul!

oh the dr pepper goodness! this was all i allowed myself to take. otherwise i would have bought the whole bin!

happy new year!

my one and only resolution: to write entries for this blog more often... and to maybe find a job.

but along the lines of my true resolution, i want to say that the reason i started this blog was to put the weird things that come into and go out of my life out there. with my thoughts and feelings attached. this includes things i see, hear, touch, eat, and/or smell. things i think and/or feel. and everything else in between.

so tonight, instead of getting horribly drunk with friends i don't have, i stayed in. and watched my new netflix. l'auberge espagnole. a lovely movie about going off on your own to experience new and great things, while running into a few difficulties. and how these experiences change who you are. the french main character has decided to study abroad in spain, and finds a space living with 6 or 7 other students, all foreign but each from a different country. he meets other french people who have transplanted themselves to barcelona. a terribly uncultured englishman, who is the younger brother of a female roommate. and several women who all intrigue him in different ways.

the script was quite good, even with me following along to the subtitles. but the directing. i do not recommend watching this movie with even the slightest headache. the director is really big on using the camera to convey what the characters are feeling. which can get the viewer a little seasick. but the movie survived the sea wreck and it was interesting through the end. i do recommend to one and all. also if you're interested, audrey tautou, of amelie fame,  plays the role of the frenchman's girlfriend back home.

what's weird is i remember being recommended this movie by an ex-roommate's blind date. how crazy is that? when he told me about it i knew i'd like it. and that more likely than not i'd want to be friends with him. (as i knew i never would be with that roommate.) after watching it, i'm slightly sadden by not having the opportunity to get to know him more.

l'auberge espagnole at imdb.com

my cravings as of late...

best purchase EVER

if you read my blog at all, you know that i'm rather adverse to capital letters. so when i write EVER, i mean it!!!

today i set out early (for me) and trekked to the aldo store at the ashland-division-milwaukee intersection. there i found my dream shoes. i've been drooling over these brown pumps for a least a year. and so far they have been too expensive for me. why would i spend $80 on a pair of shoes i'll never wear? at least any time soon. being unemployed puts a serious cramp on the style. but they were marked down to $60, and the boyfriend gave me a $40 gift certificate a few months ago. so i figured they were worth spending $20 of my own money on. then i get to the register and they were $25!!!! who knew?!?! i should have. this is why i love that store. awesome shoes for next to nothing. it's even better than dsw. the shoes are higher quality and are cheaper!

don't you love them?

hockey education

so i think my boyfriend is trying to get me to bone up on my hockey knowledge. actually... i know he's trying to do this. though i might have suggested it.

i've been a fan of hockey for a while. ever since i came across a late night airing of a game when i was in high school. although upon further thought, i used to watch roller hockey games at my friend's roller rink in middle school. even with this early introduction to hockey i never attended a game until my boyfriend (when we were still just friends) got us tickets to a rangers game. i think that totally changed my feelings towards the game. i liked it before. i was drawn to it before. but now i'm in love with it. i love the rough and tumble action, the swiftness with which a player can score, and the crazy die-hard fans.

now i have to stop here and say that the rangers suck, as do their fans. there's no loyalty and no real teamwork. you can tell by watching the game that the only reason these guys are playing for this club is that the paycheck and the city is awesome.

since i moved to chicago, i've become a blackhawks fan. they are an amazing team with incredible promise. the show great love and support for each other. and the fans... they are fans! they are probably the most invested ones in the u.s.a. (i wouldn't speak for canada. they're pretty crazy there.) nothing is ever said against the blackhawks. well maybe there's a "oh, come on!" when they fumble a play, but none of the rangers booing of their own players.

so for christmas my boyfriend got me "hockey for dummies" and "the greatest hockey stories ever told". i'm getting quite an education. "scrum" means a fight or skirmish. which has been the most helpful in reading the greatest book. the dummies book was also helpful in teaching me how to read the stats. something any fan of any sport needs to know. the greatest stories book is a compilation of some of the greatest pieces ever written about hockey. some of them the writer is important, sometimes it's the story, and a lot of them it's the location that is important. it's about hockey all over the world, for all ages, and all types of fans.

we'll see how much better of a fan i become...

winnie-the-pooh

i really want this book... volume... set? i have a version of this treasury. but it's horribly beat up, and in the far away future i'd like to share these stories with my children. my version is really just too dead already; i can't imagine how awful it will be in even 5 years time. and since i can't afford the first edition (and really who would let a child read a $8600 set of four books?!?!?) i would like a replacement of my exact version. i know i'm crazy. i might relent and buy a different printing, but it has to be in this format. i like that it's separated into individual books, exactly as it was originally printed. and i like that the set contains both volumes of a. a. miline's children's poetry. i don't think that poetry versus short story are presented well to children. they never realize that their books all rhyme. when they advance in reading levels they leave poetry behind and move onto the short story, never to return again, but they should. and i think that miline's poetry is a perfect stepping stone. still for children but more literary than 'dick and jane' books.

anyways back to the books themselves. my versions are missing their covers. i've never seen them actually. except for in the pictures online. i'm scared that if i really read them, they'll just fall apart. mine look almost as bad as the ones in the picture. i'll remain on the hunt.


http://www.librarything.com/work/2810262

oliver cromwell

soooo... i just got a late night phone call from my best friend requesting me to tell her step-dad about how awful oliver cromwell was. apparently in a drunken discussion with her large extended family cromwell came up as a topic, and her step-dad had sided with him. no one else in the room agreed with him. and yet my friend needed me to add to the number of people against him. i asked her if he had slept through all of the museums and churches and castles when he had visited ireland, because a lot of them included a small display about how cromwell killed a lot of people, burnt down a lot of buildings, and stole a lot of property. she subsequently decided that i needed to tell him myself. when her step-dad got on the phone, i asked him why he liked oliver cromwell. his response, "i don't like cromwell. well.... i like the name." hahaha well... that ended that argument. i'm sure he was just pressing my friend's buttons. and i'm sure her mom with say something about calling me and interrupting my evening with ridiculousness. but hey, it gave me something to write about.

RIP Brittany Murphy

time to move on

i'm done for the semester. took my second and last final monday evening. i'm slowly cluing into the rest of my life. i really need to clean the apartment, find a job, and mail my christmas presents. i also need to organize my finances, including paying for next semester.

my roommate is moving to germany for the semester. so we need to find a person to replace him. and negotiate with the management company to lower the rent for the period of time that we can't get someone to replace him. it is assumed that someone would only rent january through may, whereas he will be gone january through august. the utilities have to been changed to my name, and i have to figure out how i'll pay rent for the next few months. i still have savings built up, but i think my life is more expensive than i realize. thus the re-evaluation of my finances.

cleaning also a priority. i'm leaving for a week for christmas, and i know that if i don't do it now it'll never get done. i need to make a list and prioritize. a lot of things to do, so little time. but i have to get things done. time to freak out!

bad bad blogger!

to catch everyone up (meaning no one. well meaning "catch you up" cuz i only have one follower.) the enormous project i've been working on met its end today. today was presentation day. i finalized the project last night and had the thing bound this morning. then presented at 1pm. all went so so. my teacher was fairly unresponsive, though we got him to laugh a few times, but he gave no critique and asked few questions. i know my grade so far, and i can't imagine completely failing the project, so i think my grade is safe.

the run-up after thanksgiving was definitely mangled. my intention was to have the entire estimate done the monday following t-day, but it wasn't done until the very last minute. finally when my group did meet on this past tuesday, another member and i sat and figured out the powerpoint and the report, while the third member studied for a different class. then we, the one active member and i, met again yesterday so he could give me his printouts. i finalized everything at 11pm last night. this wasn't how the project was supposed to go. (side note: i had done the powerpoint in office 2007, which the presentation computer did not have. then the lab computers wouldn't save it as an earlier version. i got it saved as some other format, which ended up working. what a bad start to the presentation.)

now it is done, and i'm onto studying for the next final. economics. i'm not that worried about it. but i will spend a part of the weekend studying.