Monday, July 30, 2012

Monday Miscellany #2

Monday Miscellany is for recounting my weekend (in totally non-chronological order) and whatever thoughts are swimming around that may not make for great standalone posts. Enjoy!


I saw our local city college's closing night performance of Avenue Q this weekend with a couple of girlfriends, and it was hilarious (and kind of R-rated). It's a musical about the quarter-life crisis (basically) which involves puppets and racism and sex and unemployment and a bunch of other hot topics. The actors were really great, the set and theater were awesome, and I was laughing throughout the whole show. Another successful girl outing in the books!

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A couple weekends back, I got to see my brother, sister-in-law and nephew in real life for the first time in a year! They had been living in China teaching English, and I am selfishly SOOOO glad they are back in the states. I mean seriously, how did I go an entire year without kissing this little guy's cheeks?


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Last week I used a LivingSocial deal at a new place in town called The Painted Cabernet. It's basically an art studio where you are taught step-by-step how to create a specific painting, and you get to drink alcohol while you do it. Clearly these people know their market here in Santa Barbara: wannabe artists who love wine! I'm totally going again this weekend with Amy and hopefully a few other friends, and I'm super stoked! Here's my first masterpiece:


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When I'm in a boring meeting at work taking minutes (yawn) and there comes a topic that I don't have to take extensive notes on (or really pay attention to at all), I doodle. Most recently, I've been writing out all the names Joe and I have come up with for our hypothetical future children. Last week I narrowed it down to two perfect boy names and one and a half perfect girl names. (The second girl name is still a little iffy, but I think I have the first name at least nailed down.) Of course, I can't control the genders of any of our kids, but I jokingly told Joe last week that we can have no more than two boys and no more than two girls, because there's no way I can come up with a third perfect name for either sex. I have a very specific, very ridiculous method of choosing my nonexistent children's names, and since I have to get Joe's stamp of approval on top of making sure the names fit my silly rules, the possibilities are NOT endless. (But I am super stoked about the names we have (more or less) solidified.)

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I wasn't planning on doing it this year, but I signed up for VEDA again. It's Vlog Every Day in August, and it is a ton of fun. Last year it was a bit overwhelming (mostly because my laptop is VERY old and VERY slow, so editing took forever and often crapped out on me), so this year my plan is to do a bare-bones effort: keep them around two minutes long, one take using my phone, no edits. And if I miss a day or can't find anything worth saying about the topic, I'll deal. Mostly I decided to go for it because I'm hoping I'll be able to do at least a couple fun videos while I'm in SCOTLAND! (SO EXCITED.) Also, I apologize in advance for the fact that I absolutely cannot subscribe to all 100+ participants. But I'm going to try to keep up with a bunch of them and I'll explore the other folks as I have time.

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Lastly: I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. One of the pastors at my church referenced it in a sermon recently, and I decided I needed to know the whole story. It's by far the longest book I've picked up in quite a while (800+ pages on my Nook!) but I'm liking it so far. I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to keep up with all the Russian names or that the story would just be dull or depressing, but so far (150 pages in) I am not regretting this decision. In fact, as an English major, I should probably be ashamed that I'm just barely picking up my first Dostoyevsky!

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How was your weekend?

4 comments:

  1. LOL-- now I'm curious to find out what your silly rules are for naming kids! Also, be careful-- no sooner had Allan and I come up with names for our potential future kids than I got pregnant ;-)

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    1. Oh, we've had one of the boy names set in stone for years and managed not to get pregnant yet. :-P

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    2. Hee... unless it's a combination of having BOTH a boy and girl name lined up ;-)

      Didn't you once blog (or maybe it was a personal conversation?) about names, long ago? I remember their being some neat choices in the mix!

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  2. I am SO excited for our class this weekend! It's going to be a blast!!

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