Friendship on Memorial Day

Friends.

I am so grateful for them. Without them, my life would be utterly dull and glum.

For instance, who else would I have *owned* at Monopoly this afternoon?

For who else would I stay up 'till 2am baking a cheesecake?

Who else could I shake my head at for playing too many video games, yet at the same time borrow a PS2 controller & game from? (I'll always be a gamer at heart.)

Thank You, Lord, for bringing them into my life. (:♥

Happy Memorial Day, by the way! May those who have died fighting for our country rest in peace, and may those who have in the past or are currently serving to protect their countries from harm (no matter where in the world they live/come from) be blessed. [...Amen.]
　

Dogs and Oven Usage

This is Leo. I'm babysitting (dogsitting?) him for my friend while she's in Oklahoma for a week. I am his regular babysitter whenever she goes out of town, so Leo is used to me & my family's house. All right, so that's a bit of an understatement: the dog loves me. He follows me EVERYWHERE. He won't even go to bed until I do. Good thing he's so cute and sweet or else I'd find this extremely annoying. (I'm a cat person and usually don't warm up to dogs too much, but Leo and Fred [my family's dog] are some of the few exceptions.)

In other news...after hanging out at a friend's house all day, watching chick flicks and getting majorly owned at Batman Monopoly (seriously, I mortgaged all of my properties and still went bankrupt...) I went home to the beginnings of rain! ♥

Rain and clouds are my favorite type of weather, probably due to the fact that I don't see them more than a handful of days each year. So I was very cheerful this evening and decided to do some baking (since no one was available to go to the Cheescake Factory & devour overpriced-yet-delicious cheesecake with me). After some thought I settled on a recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies from my trusty Nestle cookbook. I tweaked it a bit (they never add enough cinnamon in their recipes...and there's no such thing as too much cinnamon!) and they turned out pretty good. Want to see?

They taste better than they look, really.

And since I'm on the topic of baking...for Mother's Day a couple weeks ago I decided at the last minute to make breakfast in bed for my mom, and I found a recipe for blueberry buckle (basically coffee cake w/ blueberries in it) online. I had never made coffee cake from scratch before; I'd always relied on the Bisquik box recipe (which is never quite sweet enough for my taste), so I was excited to try this recipe out. Well, let me tell you, it was AMAZINGly delicious. There's nothing like fresh blueberries to spruce up a recipe.

I ate it for breakfast for the next few days...I think I ate more of it than anyone else, hehe...

Beautiful.

...And that is that.

Oh, by the way, I've a sad confession to make: I just now, after over a year of having this blog, realized that I don't have to use the html view when writing my blog post. ¬_¬;; Speak of this to no one...

No sleep + BBC = fun times

2 posts in less than 12 hours?! I couldn't fall asleep, so apparently my muses are on hyperdrive.

But really, I was perusing the BBC's news site and stumbled across an article on England's summer weather (which apparently is typically very wet and cool-one word: ENVY) and I was reminded of the reason I read the BBC in the first place:

"The very notion of cramming Wimbledon, Ascot, Henley, the Lord's Test match, hundreds of church fetes, and thousands of back-garden barbecues into the second half of June is clearly an act of extreme provocation. Is it any wonder that Mother Nature cannot resist?" -http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7561411.stm

Subtle yet clever. Or it could just be that I'm really, really tired. At any rate, I'd have to dig around for quite awhile to find that sort of humour on CNN, MSNBC, and the like.

Anyway...off to sleep for real this time.

Peachy-keen

Aaaaaaah. I'm so terrible at posting here. Even though no one reads this blog, I still feel bad for neglecting it. So, let us begin again...

The spring semester is [finally!!!] over. Unfortunately I didn't do too well in one of my classes so I have to take it over again. :( That's never happened to me before; I've always been a straight-A student. But this semester I kind of fell off the bandwagon I guess. Oh well, I don't mind taking it again if it means I can get a better grade and fix my GPA. Though the thought of sitting through a lab every week again makes me... *twitch*

Anyways, so I'm going to take a summer class (different course) so that I can retake that other class in the fall without overloading my semester.

I saw the new Star Trek movie 2 times in less than a week, even though I am the furthest thing from a trekkie possible. It was well-made: good plot, fast-paced action, great graphics, and best of all a good cast. I haven't enjoyed an action/sci-fi/fantasy/superhero-type movie that much in years.



On Sunday I went to a local peach orchard with my aunt, nana and cousin to [you guessed it) pick peaches. We tried to get there early to avoid the heat as much as possible, though of course this is the Southwest so avoiding the heat is like a fish avoiding water. (At least at this time of year.) Anyway, the peaches were really cheap ($1.75/lb) so we picked about 25 lbs in all.



It was a lot of fun, and afterwards we went to a pancake breakfast (still @ the orchard/farm) and waited in line for about 45 minutes to consume gigantic frisbee-sized pancakes. They were delicious, but we definitely had to share them (Half of one filled me up plenty.)



Then yesterday I went out to breakfast with my cousin @ IHOP and our waiter hadn't come around for awhile, so he told me how one time at a restaurant his waiter left without telling anyone to take over the table. So we finished eating and sat around twiddling our thumbs, looking around, and our waiter still didn't show up. So we finally signaled another waiter and told him our waiter hadn't come around in awhile, and you know what he told us? He went home because he was having back pains. Now, if you leave in the middle of your shift, shouldn't you maybe get someone to take over for you?!? Unbelievable...at least the food was good. -_-

Later he drove me home, and we had to endure a 45-minute drive on the freeway in his car without a/c. In the hottest part of the day. I nearly died. x_x

So that's the latest of my exciting life adventures.

And now, off to bed!

The Ordinary Side of an Extraordinary Man ♥

Some lesser-known tidbits about JPII's personality.

♥♥♥ He was (& is) a saint, no doubt about it, but he was also an ordinary person.

Wish I could've snuck him some of my homemade desserts. It's the least I could've done for the man whose teaching and life has influenced my own in such a profound way.

JPII, we [will always] love you!!!!!!!

Just an Ordinary Day

Today I:

♦ Woke up late (15 minutes before class started, to be exact)
♦ Helped dissect a fetal pig (pobrecito!!)
♦ Watched 1.5 Gilmore Girls episodes
♦ Ate 2.5 of my homemade, less-than-24-hours-old chocolate-chip cookies
♦ Went to Old Navy & spent my mom's money on cute shirts :P
♦ etc.

All in all, a good day. Just one class tomorrow, then weekend, here I come!!!

Schoolstervision

Sorry that I haven't posted in awhile (k, that's an understatement...a long while...) but life has been hectic these days. The semester's drawing to a close (finally! Ready to collapse over the finish line...) so of course I've been spending most of my time as follows:

1. Sitting in class, absorbing (or not) info
2. Trying to have a social life, and putting off doing my hw in the process
3. Frantically trying to finish said hw on time, and failing miserably half the time

This has not been a good semester for me at all, so I'm glad it's almost over. I don't regret spending more time w/ my friends, though-I never spend enough time with them, and I always have the most fun goofing off together. Mostly watching movies @ home & walking aimlessly around various malls since we're poor and mostly unemployed atm, but still. ;) It's like high school all over again.

ANYWAY, so that's what my school & social lives have been like. In other news...Lent came and went, and Easter, too! I kind of fell off the bandwagon as far as my Lenten aspirations went, due to a number of factors (one of which being the death of my uncle Benny-may he rest in peace). But I greatly enjoyed participating in the Triduum services, especially on Holy Saturday evening @ the Easter Vigil-my absolute favorite Mass of the whole entire year. No matter how lousy a Lent I've had, going to the Easter Vigil always brings me back to God. I wish I could adequately describe it-our entrance with candles into the dark church, the multiple Scripture readings and psalms in the dim light, the lights being turned on as the congregation sings our first 'Alleluia' since Lent began, the joyous Gospel proclamation of Christ's Resurrection, and Fr. Ed's ever-beautiful and joyful homiy about the miracle of Easter. Then we get to witness the baptism (always emoional for me, even though I usually don't know the people) and/or reception of other Sacraments by new Catholics ♥ and renew our own baptismal vows. All the while we get to sing beautiful hymns of joy.

Then I go back again on Easter morning to squeeze in with the Christmas/Easter crowd (if you're one of those people, come more often, please!) to celebrate again.

So...I think that's it for blogworthy news. Oh, and I decided to give Twitter a go, as you can see on the sidebar >>>. I like it, even if I'm the only person who reads my tweets. OH! One more thing...I've got myself a new quasi-addiction: the Eurovision song contest. Check out the youtube channel and get yourself addicted, too.

Can't wait for the contest finals on May 16...I'll totally be watching online! Thinking of having someone(s) over to watch it w/ me, but not sure if any of my friends will understand my newfound addiction. So far my top 5 (ok, 6, couldn't make up my mind) favorites are:

1. Serbia's Cipela
2. Finland's Lose Control
3. Bosnia & Hercegovina's Bistra Voda
4. Ireland's Et Cetera
5. Andorra's La Teva Decisio
6. Armenia's Jan Jan

When it gets closer to the finals, I may comment more. Go watch all 42 songs on youtube! There's some awesome music out there.

K, gotta go finish a paper now.

God bless!