Hathor convinced me that I should go ahead and post these pictures, even though I was concerned that they might make my life seem a little bit too awesome:
Awww. Being spoiled feels so good!
Here's another thing I'm loving recently:
See how the steam from my morning Stash Chai Spice is wafting in the breeze from the kitchen window? Like all the other windows in my house, it stayed open all night last night for the first time of the season! Woo, spring, woo!
Yesterday, my neighbor and I ran nine miles (it was 30 degrees warmer than Friday, and felt fabulous!). I talked to my mom on the phone. I made pita and hummus and almond rocha and took them to the swinging holiday party at a friend's gorgeous loft in Saint Paul. I was very social, and at the unsubtle insistence of the girls in my department, chatted up both that young Greek engineering student and the rather nerdy geographer whom, the hostess informed me, she had invited just for me (no pressure!).
It wasn't much, but it was something. Today, I have accomplished virtually nothing. And as lovely and relaxing as that may sound, it is stressful because I have things to accomplish (another conference abstract is due tomorrow, and I finally scheduled my French exam for Tuesday), and it makes me depressed that I can't seem to do them!
Partly, I was out very late. And partly, when I did finally wake up, it was incredibly dark, because we were under heavy gray rain(!)clouds (though now it's apparently 7° and snowing, which meant that getting to this evening's Soup Night [though I did thankfully have a ride!] was a bit hairy). I also seem to have spent several hours in my kitchen--doing last night's pita/hummus/rocha dishes, cleaning my counters and stove, making asiago crackers and crudite to go with last night's hummus...
But not only have I not written this abstract (due tomorrow), I have not even decided on which topic to write it. And I don't want to. I want to go to bed, or clean my house some more, or watch a movie, or go to bed, or read a book, or maybe have some tea, or go to bed.
I do, however, want to go to New Orleans in April, and I don't want to tell my advisor that I neglected to submit anything. The fact that I don't have finals, and won't even have grading to do until Thursday (though at that point it will be a rush to finish before I skip town Sunday morning), just makes me feel like more of a slackerly failure.
UPDATE: Check it out; tomorrow's HIGH is predicted to be one below. Yikes.
Day 9
Breakfast: Company oatmeal
Snack: Apple
Lunch: Vegetable curry with brown rice; apricots
Snack: Dates and almonds
Dinner: (At the neighbors' house!) Brown rice spaghetti; vegetable sauce; salad; soy lemon pudding and agave-sweetened strawberries and nectarines
Day 10
Breakfast: Wheat-free pancakes with peanut butter and applesauce
Tea: Iced Passion herbal tea
Lunch-ish: Mixed vegetable chips; rice cracker mix; sugar-free, soy Pom-Blueberry smoothie
Snack: Watermelon, cantaloupe, and cherries
Dinner: Crudite and hummus; corn-flax chips; popcorn
Day 11
Breakfast: Oatmeal with strawberries; fruit salad; pistachios
Lunch: (Green Leaves vegan restaurant!) "Chicken" spring rolls; yellow curry with wild rice; broccoli "beef" with wild rice; Rock 'n' Roll Noodles
Tea: Iced Passion herbal tea + a Splenda
Dinner: Puffins with soy milk
I had a fantastic weekend. Saturday, I met up with Deanna and we drove out to L.A. to meet up with Jeni and her new hubby. We went to Cinespia, which is kind of like Omaha's Shakespeare on the Green, but with a movie instead of a play. And in a graveyard. 
We brought a picnic and throughly enjoyed watching Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much and the hordes of hipsters. Good times!
This morning the three of us girls headed into the Fashion District. I've never seen anything quite like it. It was something like what you might get if you mixed Florence's open markets with southern California strip malls, Mexico City street vendors, and industrial urban alleyways. I found this website after the fact, which sort of hints at the experience. I saw a few things there that I liked, but was vividly reminded that I really just don't do fashion. I lack the money and energy for it, which is okay since it only really occurs to me to think about it when I'm in southern California. I don't know what might happen to me if I lived here long-term. Baudrillard described fashion as contagion; I don't know if I'd catch it or not.
My pictures and mini-travelogue aren't quite as exciting as Curly Sue or Strovska's, but here they are anyway:
Wednesday: I leave Minneapolis
Thursday: While Bryant is in the field, I read and work at the coffee shop across the UNLV campus from his apartment
Friday: We drive to Red Rocks, go to the coffee shop with Bono on the wall, and explore the strip
Saturday: More coffee (tea), the MGM lions, a Cirque du Soleil show (not pictured), and the fountains and conservatory at the Bellagio
Sunday: These are the wild kitties Bryant feeds; they're very shy.
Monday: I soak up sun in beautiful DHS
Tuesday: My parents and I eat and hang out in Palm Springs in the warm sunshine
Wednesday: Beanna and I chat in the sunshine and do a little shopping; I fly home.
Now I'm back in Minneapolis and we're having a Winter Storm. Most of the snow had melted when I got back early Thursday morning, but then it started snowing last night and has been going all day today. Sigh.
I am happy to have had such a lovely--if brief--reprieve from my real life, but it does make it hard to come back. Did you see how nice the UNLV campus is? People actually live in these warm, sunny places--I know some of them personally!
The truth, of course, is that I'm very fortunate to be able to travel to, and to have lived in, such diverse and varied places. And someday, hopefully soon, I should be able to live closer to my favorite people--and maybe even someplace warm.
But in the meantime, I need to go be studious, or I won't be able to pass my classes and exams and get out of here.
I love coffee. I love the way it smells and tastes and I used to love the way it made me feel. Lately, however, I'm wondering if it has stopped loving me back.
Ever since I went off it (and all caffeine) over Christmas, it has affected me strangely--or maybe I've just been better at noticing its effects. Last week, I realized that two nights in a row, I'd had trouble falling asleep. If there's one thing I've always been good at, it's sleeping, so I found the situation rather disturbing. Both days, I'd had coffee in the morning. The next two days, I didn't--and didn't have any trouble sleeping.
So yesterday morning, wanting a little morning lift, and craving the taste--but not the jolt--of an Americano, I instead ordered tea--Mighty Leaf's Vanilla Bean. And my goodness, was I impressed. Ordinarily, I order tea (herbal) when I'm at the coffee shop at night and don't want any caffeine; I'd never ordered it in the daytime. But I did it again today, and think I may be a convert. I definitely experienced a nice lift, and felt energized without the jittery-ness and distractability that coffee seems recently to induce. And I floated down gently, imperceptibly, without the malaise that comes with a coffee buzz wearing off.
I've heard tea-drinkers talk about these things--as I've sipped my coffee. Somehow the little tea bag tag poking out of their to-go cups always seemed a little pretentious; I don't know why. I do think, however, that it may be time to extend my pinkie finger and join them.
