Well, whaddaya know?

I got a Congratulations! letter in the mail today, for making the Dean's List for PSU's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Apparently "The Dean's list recognizes a select group of students within the college who have demonstrated superior academic achievement." Funny, I never got one of these letters from Stanford. :} I didn't even know PSU had a Dean's List, or that those things actually existed, so I was kind of puzzled at first. But it's kind of nice. :)

In less happy news, while doing some last packing at the apartment this afternoon, I received a $150 parking ticket for trying to squeeze into the only available tiny spot on the block close enough to carry boxes to the car from the apartment. I guess they really didn't know that I needed to be in that spot in order to load my car, and that I really tried to squeeze in and leave the sidewalk ramp clear (and practically all of it was clear), but I still thought it was very very rude of them to give me a ticket. Grrrrrrrr...... Hugo thought it was kind of interesting that he managed to get my truck towed while moving into the apartment, and I managed to get an expensive parking ticket while moving out of it. All in all, I think it's a good place to leave behind.

Pictures and license plates

I forgot to post the link to the OMSI pictures last night. If you want to see some dinosaurs, and a couple of pictures of Graham, go here

So, I received paltry few suggestions for car names when I put my poll out a few weeks ago. I've sort of been waiting until I got my license plates to really decide, hoping that the plates might give me a clue as to an appropriate name. I picked up the plates this afternoon, and unfortunately am still at a loss as to the car's name. The plate is: "ZZL 775". Any ideas? Graham and I were tossing a couple around, including Zelda (appropriate for the Z-ness of the license plate), Ingrid (which I'm voting against, since Kirsty has a friend named Ingrid and that would be kind of odd), Isis, and Sheba (both Graham's ideas). We came up with a lot more than that, but none that were really serious. Any opinions, anybody? I don't know why I'm having such a hard time naming this car! (If you want to take another look at the pictures, click here.

Maiasauras and Mjadra

Well, Graham has gone back home after a lovely and enjoyable (at least on my part) weekend visit. On Saturday we went to OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I had never been before, and it was definitely a worthwhile trip. The main exhibit was T.Rex On Trial, a dinosaur exhibit. It was very exciting. They also had tons of "brain-teaser" stations with all sorts of puzzles with blocks and rings and strings and things, some of which had us very confused for a very long time. After attempting one for about five minutes, I read the note below the instructions that said: "This puzzle has never been solved. Can you do it?" I quit trying. :)

After spending a few hours at OMSI, we went to Nicholas Restaurant for lunch. It's a small, rather crowded Lebanese/Middle Eastern restaurant that serves amazingly good food. We ordered the vegan Mezza (basically an appetizer platter) because it has one of my favorite dishes on it -- Mjadra, a rice and lentil dish with caramelized onions on top. It also came with tabouleh, bread and hummus, falafels, and a garbanzo bean dish that didn't have a name or a description in the menu, but was absolutely amazing. Oh, and we also ordered fresh-squeezed peach juice. The waiter warned us, "oh, the peach juice isn't vegan," so we explained that we weren't actually vegan, we just liked the selection on the vegan Mezza. :) We were completely stuffed when we left, and still had enough food left for a very filling lunch this afternoon.

Saturday night we went to the contra dance in Portland, where Kevin Carr and Barbara Mendelsohnn were playing. They were quite surprised to see Graham there, so that was fun. It was good to see them again, and always a joy to hear them play. The contra was very fun, and reminded me that I should attend more often. There were a lot of familiar faces, but a lot of new ones as well, making me realize that I've sort of dropped out of the contra community for a while. Anyway, it was fun.

Today was a mellow day. I sewed some more of my Renegade Rose waistcoat that's supposed to be done for May Day. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I'm certainly going to try. It's the buttonholes I'm not looking forward to. :) I took Graham to the airport and have been doing homework ever since. Hugo and Ellie are flying home from the Los Angeles Ale tonight, fortunately getting a ride from somebody else, arriving somewhere around 1:00 a.m., I'd imagine. They're both going to be totally wiped out by a long weekend of dancing and revelry, but it will be nice to have them home again.

Family Friday

For those of you who haven't read my sidebar calendar recently (and I won't blame you if you haven't, seeing as I hardly ever update it), my big news of the weekend is going to be a visit from my wonderful brother! Yep, Graham is flying up on Friday evening to spend the weekend with me. I'm very excited. I'll certainly be ready for company by the time he arrives, because Hugo is in Texas on a business trip all this week, and he and Ellie are both in California for the LA Ale this coming weekend, so I've had the house to myself (not counting the real estate agents) for several days already. Not that I wouldn't normally be looking forward to a brudder-visit, but it'll be nice to have somebody else in the house. :)

But before Graham gets here, I'm driving down to Salem as soon as my classes finish at 12:35 on Friday to interview Siri Kirpal for my anthropology research paper. The paper is supposed to be about culture change, and I chose the sub-topic of religious culture. So I'm going to interview Siri Kirpal about Sikhism in the United States. Unfortunately, Jim will be at work Friday afternoon, so I won't get to see him. That will have to be another time. But it's going to be a busy Friday. :)

Planting Smiles and Summer Plans

A couple of weeks ago I went out and bought a bunch of different kinds of sunflower seeds and some potting soil, and I spent a bit of time yesterday afternoon planting them in seed trays and pots. Unfortunately, we'd only bought one seed-starting tray (a little mini-greenhouse, actually), but that was a gross underestimate for the number of seeds I'd bought. So I went back to the Garden Center after school today and bought three more, and a bunch more potting soil as well. It's been raining all day, so I haven't been able to plant the rest of the seeds, but hopefully it will be nice tomorrow, so all my seeds will be on roughly the same schedule. When they start to come up and are ready to transplant, we're going to plant them all up and down the path from the front door to the bottom of the driveway, and make a field of sunflowers in front of the house. I'm excited. :)

So, I know you've all been wondering after that cryptic hint in my last entry, what on earth I'm doing this summer. Well, to make a long story short, I've decided that French isn't the language for me, and that it will make things a heck of a lot easier for me and more efficient in terms of degree progress if I go back and resurrect my Spanish. Which means that the France trip is off. Which is completely okay, as I was having a hard time imagining a summer away from Portland in the first place. The current plan is to brush up on my Spanish, using my old textbooks, audiobooks, etc., and take an intensive second-year course at PSU this summer. If I can manage it, that means I'll be completely done with my language requirement, and won't have to worry about credit transfers or taking language during the school year. I imagine I'm going to struggle somewhat in the beginning, but I think it's doable. I may take an anthropology class at the same time, but I'm not sure yet. The only reason I'd do that would be so that I wouldn't have to take it from the normal teacher, who I don't really get along with. (I just dropped that class, since I was already overloaded and I didn't get on with her teaching style.) So it looks like I'll be pretty much a full-time student for the summer. Sigh. But it'll be good.

So that's what I'm up to. I've just gotten my big research paper assigned for one of my classes, and we're starting our group projects in another class tomorrow, so things are probably going to get even busier than they already are in the next couple of weeks. But I get to watch my sunflowers grow!

Finally!

I've finally finally posted pictures of my new (or not so new anymore) car! It still doesn't have a name, so please look at them and give me suggestions! (on my blog comments, not buzznet)

Sorry about the sporadic nature of my posts (or lack thereof) recently. Murgatroid (my computer) has been having a midlife crisis and has been giving me all sorts of trouble that I don't feel like going into at the moment. My internet access is rare and fleeting, so it's kind of hard to blog if I'm not sure if I'll be able to post it. And I've got more homework to do before bedtime tonight, so I'm not going to provide a full update at the moment, either, though lots of other things are going on. There, does that make you curious or what? :)