busybusybusy!

today has been the busiest day of my whole life. oh - em - gee!
let's preface, first. matt decided, in all his awesome sweetness, to visit me tuesday into wednesday. he arrived around 1:30am wednesday morning and was gone in just over 12 hours. in the meantime, we made kissies and a big breakfast and made our ipods makeout. it was pretty good.
unfortunately, it meant that i bagged my lab yesterday (well, wednesday) morning and didn't get any homework done for the other two wednesday classes. amy's class - no big deal. english 458 is a challenging class, but our assignment deadlines are flexible and we were doing the same poet (actually, poem) for the second day. no new readings. my film class was another story. i forgot to do the project proposal - the 100 point assignment leading up to our gigando 500 point end-of-semester project. i've decided to do a film about queers on campus. it should be pretty sweet, but i only decided that.. late last night? i talked to the instructor and she gave me a deadline extension for the proposal. i spent all day today thinking about it (while ignoring class) and much of the previous night thinking of awesome shots to use. i'm pretty psyched. ^_^ you can check out the proposal on my dork-blog here.
today, i was incredibly productive. not only did i make up that lab and finish the proposal, but i also had a second phone interview for the NYCTF college ambassador position (refer to the same dork-blog for my application to that) and this site for more info about the program. it's a pretty awesome program and i hope that i can be their ambassador.. and not just for the dollars. mm, dollars. in any case, the basic premise of the program is that new york needs more public school teachers, so they've set up a teach-for-america style alternative-certification program that takes non-education majors and makes them worthwhile. with stipends. my job, should i get it, would be to hype it up at penn state and meet some recruitment goals. sounds pretty awesome and i look forward to promoting a program that i can really get behind.
aside from lab and the interview, i managed to attend an LAUC meeting for the first time, attended a Ralph Ellison symposium (which was fairly good, but a bit dull because it focused on biographical content more than literary work), and finally made my spring semester actual. i emailed sanford schwartz about adding his already-full hitchcock course and he said i could do it and i'm ridiculously, run-on excited. extra good news: the thursday class will be shared with graduate students.. the discussion should run extra awesome. huzzah!
i did some other exhausting stuff today, too. but, i don't feel like talking about it. i also, literally, collapsed upon arriving back in my room. i sprawled across the bed (i didn't say that i have lousy aim in collapsing) and drooled on the covers for half an hour before i could even move again. it was a very long day.

tomorrow should be a little easier. even though i have an italian vocab quiz for which i am *not* prepared, i should be able to just take things a little slower. and then go to the drag show. yayayayayay! anita and i are going to go in drag. break out the chest wraps, we're dressing up! also, tomorrow starts the national conference on peer tutoring in the writing center (or something to that effect). i'm moderating two panels on saturday after doing a practice GRE. wish me luck!

hope everyone's having a great semester thus far -- luck with midterms!

bentoooo!

i forgot to mention: i've been heartily enjoying cooking lately.
having my own kitchen has really brought out my desire to have a good time in it. now i make wonderful dinners (that i usually don't eat for some weird reason) and adorable lunches. the lunches, of course, are strongly aided in cuteness-factor by my two new bento boxes and by some ideas that i've picked up from cooking cute (a very helpful bento site) and other sites.
there's nothing not wonderful about cookie-cuttered sandwiches and precious little portions of rice, edamame and carrots. i even bought some delicious organic baby carrots and baby peppers at the farmers' market. yay: healthy for me and the environment! it's really fun to make my lunch, which would normally be a pretty bland affair of leftovers in an awkwardly large insulated lunchbox, into something cute and pleasant. i now take even the simplest things, like a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich, and make it cute by using mini cookie cutters (anita had some spring themed ones and i got some autumn themed ones at wal-mart for only $1.76 for a pack of six). the resulting sandwich maintains all the good parts and only leaves off the crusts, if i'm careful. any leftover pieces i just eat while i'm preparing the meal, so i don't waste anything.
the bento box also encourages me to eat healthier. it's so easy and cute to pack some fresh rice and edamame into the container that vacuum seals itself (the heat sucks the lid down), i do that more often than pack unhealthy, exhausting leftovers. or spending money buying lunch at the HUB or someplace downtown.
access to the farmers' market has also encouraged me to eat in an overall healthy way: i buy produce that's locally grown using, at least relatively, sustainable methods ... i basically just go and pick out what looks most appealing. i got a zucchini roughly the size of my calf -- we're making zucchini cake (a variation on carrot cake) with it, if we ever get around to it. otherwise, we'll probably just freeze some and make stir-fry and other things with it.
so, yeah, i'm settling in nicely to the whole "i have a place called home" thing. it's temporary, but it'll do for now. and then i'll have a real home.. based, hopefully, on love. and hopefully in l.a.