Funny mail today...

The AMA thinks I'm already a doctor. I don't necessarily mind, although it will be nice when it's actually true. I got a little shiver when I saw my name written that way -- can't wait!


On the other hand, I somehow got on a mailing list as a law student. Maybe it's a sign for a second calling. I could be Holly Cummings, MD, JD, MPH. Talk about alphabet soup!

p.s. -- I posted the first photo using Picasa, Google's photo software. It's great for organizing your photos and tagging/labeling them into multiple folders without actually creating copies -- similar to Gmail's labeling properties. It also lets you publish a photo directly to your blog; my only complaint is that it wants to make each photo upload a separate blog entry, so to get the second photo onto this entry, I had to do it through the website. Not a huge deal. Also, I can't figure out why the second photo uploaded vertically or how to get it to reorient horizontally. It's not rotated this way on my hard drive. Any thoughts?

Game time

Summer brings playtime, of which I have had plenty, since I do next to no work whatsoever. At the top of my fun list this summer is softball -- I'm playing on Eric's work co-ed intramural softball team across the river in Jeffersonville. I've never played softball before, have horrible memories of high school gym class softball, and have almost no idea of the inner workings of softball/baseball (just my luck that my boyfriend is a huge baseball freak) in terms of strategy, but I decided, what the heck, it's all for fun. Plus, I've been pleasantly surprised by intramural sports before (flashback to grad school girls' flag football -- very fun times).

We play every Tuesday night, and our team is made up of a mix of younger people, including myself and Eric, his boss Shea, a girl named Ashley whose mom works for the paper, and Ashley's husband Daniel, and older people, like Mike the guy who's running the team, his sister-in-law Marcie, and her husband Terry. Daniel and Shea have obvious softball/baseball experience, and are quite good, even though the guys in this league have to bat opposite-handed. Everyone tries their hardest and generally gets hits, but some of the older people don't run so fast, so we're often tagged out at first base, but it's OK. The other teams are, as far as we can tell, chock-full of ex-softball and -baseball players -- people who may have played at the college varsity level, even. In comparison, we suck. We are 0-4, but we have a great time, and that's what counts, right?

My greatest-softball- moment-ever came last week in the second game of a double-header. We had already lost the first game by quite a few runs. I was playing third base, having come up from left field the week before. I was doing fairly well fielding the ball, other than an early mistake where I threw to first instead of tagging out the runner coming from second, and having a grand time. I don't remember which inning it was, but there were two outs and the next batter came up. He (or she; I don't remember the details) hit the ball hard along the third base line, and without even thinking, I reached my arm up and across and jumped for it. I felt the ball hit my glove and stick, and I looked at it in disbelief as everyone started cheering. I caught an out! Don't think for a moment that I played it cool, either; I started jumping up and down and cheering like the girlie girl I am. I should note that when Eric and I practice catching, I don't always do very well, especially with those "complex" pitches, so I had no expectation of catching anything like that ball in a game, ever. Nevertheless, that catch won me the game ball award. We ended up losing 10-9, and it came down to the last pitch in the last inning (see Eric's comments regarding being the last batter), but it was so much fun.

This week we re-played a team from the very first week, and they beat us just as badly as before, but I'm looking forward to playing that 10-9 team again, because we can definitely beat them, I'm sure of it. (This week I was also moved up to right field, which is better than it sounds, because the guys all bat left-handed, so right field gets a lot of action. Now I have pressure to perform!)

Another fun summertime game is poker. Normally, that sentence wouldn't make too much sense empirically, but it's summer and I'm having fun playing poker, so it works for me. I played Texas Hold'Em in a casino for the first time ever this week, and I did fairly well. I've played in home games with various people and have even played a few hands online (online poker in general holds no attraction for me, though), but the only things I've ever done at a casino are slots and blackjack. Eric convinced me it was time to try, and, with his money at stake instead of mine, my heart was a little more at ease :) We managed to sit down together at a 2-4 limit table (we even had seats next to each other), and at my highest point, I was up at least $60. Unfortunately, it all trickled away so I ended the night down $20, but all in all, it wasn't that bad.

My two big hands were full houses that shocked everyone at the table, and it's always nice to win that way. Especially the second full house, queens full of nines, that totally killed the guy I was going heads-up with. I think he was impressed; I noticed him glancing at me the rest of the night in a way that was not normal poker scrutiny. Eric said guys love having a girl at the table, and apparently it's true. Too bad the casino is too cold for me to take real advantage (read: dress a little skimpier) and play the dumb-girl-who-doesn't-know-how-to-play-poker role. I'd like to at least give it a shot!

At least my poker-playing jitters are gone, and I know I can play (without Eric) if I find myself in that situation again. Eric doesn't like 2-4 limit (neither do I, actually, but I'm too poor to play anything else), so I wouldn't make him play with me again; plus, it's silly to sit at the same table with people you know and pass your money around to each other.

And last night, we walked down to Fourth Street Live for a cheap dinner at Red Star (I bought a $25 gift certificate at Restaurant.com for $5; you have to spend $35 to redeem the $25, and we splurged a bit and bought a half-price bottle of wine so our pre-certificate bill was $49), followed by a couple of rounds of bowling at Lucky Strike. Normally we don't bowl there since it's so expensive, but the wine had left us with a nice buzz and we were feeling adventerous. I normally wouldn't expect to bowl very well after a bottle of wine, but I actually bowled one of my best games ever (a 125; I can't remember if it's my best or not) and kicked Eric's butt in both games, so maybe that's telling me something. My highlight was two strikes in a row followed by a very-near strike. My low point came in the next frame, when the red pin showed up in the center, and I went and got an employee to witness what I was sure would be another strike (in which case, you win a party for 25 people!). Needless to say, not only did I NOT get a strike, I threw a total gutter ball. The guy laughed and gave me a high-five anyway, but I was mad at being jinxed. Oh well.

This weekend, I'm excited for a hot dog-tasting event for the newspaper on Sunday. I'm not sure of the details, but I think I'm going to be eating a lot of hot dogs, so I'm gearing up. It's a competition with my own stomach even if there's no one else to race with.

At least two people read the notes on the refrigerator...

From the best comic strip in the world.

laziness

i am incapable of working without deadlines and/or fear. i'm *supposed* to be "working" right now, doing background research for my summer project. instead, i sleep late every day, play around on the internet for many hours, spend many more hours knitting and watching foodnetwork/tlc/discovery/tbs/lifetime, cook dinner, and maybe, if i'm lucky, run errands like grocery shopping or going to target. my lack of accomplishment is starting to annoy me, but i still can't bring myself to work. that's why i read other people's blogs. or blog myself. i'm not even reading, which is a shame in itself. i could be reading Manhunt, which i finally got from the library after being on the waiting list for months. instead, i'm doing nothing.

case in point: right now, it's 4:30. i've wasted away the last 2 hours sitting here in front of the computer, checking cnn.com a million times, with the justification that i'm going to be doing something at 7 (i'm going to see As You Like It, as part of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival -- i never read it, so i could even be finding out something about this play right now, but i'm not), so i can't start working NOW -- that would just be ridiculous.

no, holly, YOU'RE ridiculous.

tomorrow i need to email my boss with a weekly update, so i think tomorrow will be the day i finally do some work. until then, i think there's some more knitting and tv in store for the afternoon.

success with risotto!

Last fall, I tried making risotto for the first time, and it came out awful. I think, looking back on the experience, that it was overdone, but I didn't know that, because I was looking for the consistency change and didn't taste it until I thought it looked creamy "enough." That was dumb, because I had never made it before, so how would I know what "enough" was?

Recently, however, I've seen Giada DeLaurentis make a red wine risotto -- twice -- on the Food Network, which I watch pretty much all day, every day. The first time I saw it, I toyed with the idea of trying it one more time. After all, it IS very easy. But when I saw the SAME episode again last week, I figured fate was trying to tell me it was time to do it. So last night, I made it, and I kept tasting it during the cooking, which was the key to figuring out when it was done. It turned out FANTASTIC. Eric said it reminded him of Italy -- how much better of a compliment could I be looking for?! Eric grilled up a chicken breast to go with it, and, because I was so proud of my achievement, we took a picture:

Red wine risotto with peas and grilled chicken. The parsley in the risotto and used for the garnish is from my windowsill garden!

Here's the recipe:
Put a large pan on medium heat. Melt 3 Tbsp butter, add ~1 cup diced onion and saute until translucent. Add 2 cloves chopped garlic, sautee another 30 seconds. Add 1 cup arborio rice and toast in pan for about 2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup red wine, stir until wine is absorbed, about 2 minutes. Add about 3/4 cup simmering chicken broth/stock, stir until broth is absorbed, about 2-4 minutes. Keep adding broth in 3/4 cup increments and stirring until the broth gets absorbed. You'll use about 3-3.5 cups of broth. After a few broth cycles, TASTE the rice. Is it still crunchy? Needs to cook more! You're looking for a creamy consistency and a creamy taste without a crunch. Don't overcook it or it will become too starchy. When you've gotten the consistency right, add any remaining broth, then add about 1/3 cup of frozen peas, a handful of chopped (flat-leaf/Italian) parsley, and 1/3-1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (I used the stuff from the shake bottle; I can't afford real cheese at this point in my life). Let it all simmer together (might want to turn heat to low at this point) for a few minutes and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve in bowls with extra cheese and parsley on top. If you want, grill a chicken breast while the risotto is cooking and serve that as well. Remember: keep stirring the rice constantly so it will absorb all of the broth. And taste often! You can also use white wine instead of red, or not use wine at all.

This weekend, we also made shepherd's pie, which also turned out pretty well, but could have used a little more spice for flavor. Paprika, or salt, or something. We'll remember for next time.

Other things I did this weekend:

• Saw Cars, which was absolutely awesome. I highly recommend it.
• I learned how to make Roman shades at a sewing class, so I'll have to try that out sometime. The only problem is, your first one is best suited to a small window to save yourself a lot of agony, and we don't have any small windows in this apartment (normallly a good thing!), so I might have to just make a test version for nothing in particular.
• Went to the batting cages to get some practice in before our next softball game tomorrow. I'm on a team with Eric's work, and it's pretty fun and low-key. The only problem is, we're the only low-key, laid-back team in the league, so we might be in for some awful beats. But I'm OK with that, because everyone else is OK with it (and I'm not very good at softball), and as long as we keep that attitude, we'll have lots of fun.

I feel like I'm forgetting something, but that's OK, because it was still a jam-packed weekend.

I was born too early...

...to enjoy the spotlight spelling bees are enjoying these days. Granted, I don't think I was on track for the National Championship, but I did fairly well in my day. In second grade, I lost on "lightning," spelling "lighting" instead. In fourth grade, I got second place by spelling "awkard" instead of "awkward." A silly mistake, yes, but I was actually one of the last three contestants, and the girl who spelled awkward after me also spelled it incorrectly -- the SAME WAY -- so we tied for second. At the end of the year, we had the finals, and I lost on "officer" because I was spelling the word in my head first and for no reason, I said the "i" out loud, so right off the bat I was out. By the time I was in middle school, we lived in Princeton, where every child is so much above average that they do not encourage competition in any way, shape or form, including organized spelling bees. So I never had my chance at the nationals, but that's OK, because I am more than happy for the attention spelling is getting now. Plus, I've had my time in the spotlight -- even if no one else noticed, much less appreciated it -- as a copy editor.

First, there was the 2002 movie Spellbound. A hilarious documentary; I highly recommend it if you want to watch nervous, maladjusted adolescents compete against each other and you like to imagine how on earth they fit in at school (answer: they don't). Netflix it today! It was nominated for an Oscar, also.

This year, the movie Akeelah and the Bee hit theaters. I haven't seen it, but it's gotten fairly good reviews as a family-friendly, feel-good flick.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has had a successful run on Broadway for the last year, and I am excited to see it next year when it comes to Louisville (we're getting season tickets to the Louisville Broadway Across America season; we get to see All Shook Up, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Twelve Angry Men, Putnam Co., Spamalot, AND The Lion King!). It's gotten great reviews and won two Tonys last year.

And, most recently, this year's National Spelling Bee finals were televised in primetime, on ABC. Yes, I watched it. I have to say, I was impressed with the overall normalness of most of the contestants, especially the girls. Girls are more mature at that age, for sure. This is the first time the spelling bee finals have been televised on network TV during prime time; they've been shown on ESPN since 1994. My hearty congratulations go to this year's winner, Katharine Close, a cute and very normal-looking 13-year-old from Spring Lake, NJ. She was sponsored by the Asbury Park Press, Eric's old newspaper. Go Jersey shore! I have to give a nod to the runner-up, Finola Mei Hwa Hackett, a cute half-Asian (her middle name is Chinese, but she might be Inuit, too) girl from Canada. She was very calm and composed throughout the finals, acing all of the French words but finally stumbling on a German one.

I see this trend of increased spelling exposure as a nod toward the ever-increasing coolness of smart kids. It's about time, dammit. (We just need to make sure that our kids don't go to the other extreme and focus TOO much on the books -- I wasn't aware of the increased usage of prescription drugs as study aids, but this article enlightened me. Scary.)

Lisa Simpson once said, "Perhaps one day, people who spell correctly will replace athletes at the top of our national pantheon." That day may very well have arrived.

Strawberries

We picked 8 pounds of strawberries yesterday at Huber's farm. We discussed on the way home how funny it is that for a good price and the idea of having "fun," people willingly subject themselves to manual labor in the hot sun. Us included. Heck, I can't wait for raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries to come into season, either! Last night I made strawberry shortcake, which was really good, but there are still a lot of shortcakes and whipped cream left, and I'm still supposedly trying to lose weight. Oh well. It's a good thing we have friends in the building -- I think they'll be getting some shortcake tonight.

In the meantime, do you have any good strawberry recipes? When I buy a pint from the store, I usually just eat them fresh with whipped cream (real, not from a can!), but I'm not sure I can do that with 8 pounds of them. Plus, I don't have an electric hand mixer for beating the whipped cream. Last night I managed to whisk it stiff enough by hand, but now my arm hurts, so I don't think I can do that again. Oh well. It's a good thing we have friends in the building -- married friends, so they probably registered for an electric mixer that I can borrow. I'm also eagerly awaiting the results of the Beep Food section recipe request for strawberries -- maybe there will be something good there. (By the way, I know that Beep is a Chicago-area site, but our friend Jon is the food editor, so I keep up with it.)

File another one away

Another good idea for my dictatorship file. Only when I am in charge, everyone will wear purple, of course. On a related note, on Saturday night we went out to dinner with the spouse club (we've let the other couples off the hook, realizing that "spouse/significant other club" is a little tedious to keep saying/writing), and I got called "Che Guevara" by one of my classmates. OK, so it was mostly because of the green military-esque blazer I was wearing, but we also did discuss my plans of future revolution and rulership, so it was a double compliment/insult (and I prefer to consider it a compliment).

More news stories

1. When I was at home in Maryland last week, I appreciated reading all about the sniper trial. I didn't realize it was even going on until I went home; every day it was front-page news. Today in the C-J, the fact that John Allen Muhammad got six consecutive life terms in Maryland ("insurance in case his Virginia death sentence is overturned") was just a 3-inch blurb in national wire news. I guess if it didn't affect you directly, you don't care as much about the outcome. Just another example of how different people lead different "realities" based on where they get their news.

2. My friend Amanda posted this news article on her blog. She thinks it's extreme. I actually think it's a great idea. Impossible to implement in this country, but hey, that's what a dictatorship is good for every now and again. There's nothing worse than a smoking ban with no teeth, like the one here in Louisville. Smoking is banned in all workplaces (yay!) except bars (boo!). And Churchill Downs, of course. Hopefully the city council will realize how dumb that is and write a better ban soon. I will put Kim Jong-Il's idea away in my dictatorship file, along with mandatory reversible sterilization until parenthood worthiness is proved by classes, to be pulled out in a few years once I've taken over.

Focus!

Here is my first attempt at focused writing on this blog. I predict it doesn't last very long...

Part 1: The Media
I think I'm getting tired of the news. Or at least the spin that you inevitably encounter, and its effects on life in this country. I have a long history with The Media. In high school, I worked for The Prime, our underground paper, my freshman year, and then helped resurrect it during my junior and senior year. In college, I was a copy editor, Commentary editor, Copy Desk Chief, and Deputy Managing Editor for The Diamondback, the UMD paper. My time with the DBK did not end well, but for the most part it was a good experience. I am also the former Managing Editor for JYI, an online, undergraduate, peer-reviewed science journal, and had a stint as a "war copy editor" at Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services in 2003. Not to mention, my boyfried is a career journalist -- we met at the DBK, and he has edited for a number of papers between Northern Virginia and New Jersey and is now a news reporter at the New Albany Tribune in Indiana. I like staying abreast of the news, whether it be national, local, or scientific (I actually flip through all of my JAMA issues at least once before throwing them away!). I have to admit, though, that I am pretty selective about which media sources I use.

When I lived on the east coast, I only read the Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. I occasionally read the New York Times online when I hear about a big story (like "Contra-Contraception," the big contraceptive history piece in the NYT Magazine last month; let me know if you'd like a copy). Here in Louisville, I get the Courier-Journal on the weekends to keep decently abreast of local news, read the style sections, and clip the Sunday coupons. Ever since college, I've headed to CNN.com at least once a day to stay up-to-date on anything late-breaking and/or exciting. But lately, I'm getting tired of two things: politicized news and the one-hour news cycle.

In case you didn't know, I am a democrat. It has occurred to me that the news sources I turn to are part of the "liberal media" that Fox news reporters and Stephen Colbert lambast so much. (I still have not quite figured out Stephen Colbert; IS he a republican or does he just mock them so well that other republicans don't realize it?) Overall, that doesn't really bother me; the news I read seems to be impartial and fact-driven, and I never read editorial pages or watch TV news pundit shows, anyway.

But the other night, we were at dinner at Los Aztecas downtown (we walked there -- yay for downtown living!), and the TV behind the bar was tuned to Fox news, and Bill O'Reilly happened to be on. I couldn't help but watch some of the closed-captioned "conversations" Bill was having with various guests, and I just became angrier and angrier. I can't stand people like him, with their crazy right-wing opinions and religion-based views. That's why I prevent as much as I can any exposure to programming or people like that. But then I realized that the people I disagree with prevent themselves from being exposed to the so-called "liberal media." If you ask me, someone who says that American troops are being killed in Iraq as punishment for homosexuality in the U.S. is crazy and out of touch with reality. But the question becomes, whose reality are they really out of touch with? The answer is, MY reality, which is pretty much the same as the reality most people I know are living. But one could argue that I am out of touch with a crazy conservative's reality, and therefore just as crazy. And I would agree with that point. So because we do have politicized "news" reporting, it's perfectly logical that people would seek out news sources that they tend to agree with. I do, and that's why I only ever hear from the "liberal" media. Pat Buchanan does, and that's why he only ever hears from the "conservative" media. Are we both like ostriches with our heads in the sand? Pretty much.

My other gripe about the news these days involves the fact that we live in an (to use the overused description) increasingly plugged-in society, with the Internet and cell phones and PDAs to keep us up to date with everything going on in the world. If there's an earthquake in Asia, we know about it right away. This immediate access to absolutely everything has its benefits and downfalls. The benefits are pretty obvious: we know what is going on at any given time. The downfall is that the news has become so pressed for actual news that at any given time of the day, what passes for news is likely to be nothing more than filler. And that gets old. Case in point: on Tuesday, the lede story on CNN.com for most of the day was about the anniversary of Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba. There are NO new leads in this case, it's been talked to death a million times over already, and frankly, I'm kind of tired of it. Until the day she is actually found, there is no justification for her being a lede story. None.

If you were unlucky enough to tune into a broadcast news channel last week when the Rayburn Congressional building was under lock-down, you undoubtedly would have been inundated with reporters giving a blow-by-blow description of each and every emergency vehicle arriving, what each emergency personnel uniform looked like, and what the mood was like on Capitol Hill ("quite tense," "still very tense," "unsure what is going on," etc.). Did the reporters have any actual information? Probably not. ("I'm not sure of that, exactly," "We are not sure what is going on right now," "We have not been told what the legislators are doing inside the building," etc.). This is the problem with 24-hour news channels -- they're forced to report the news for 24 hours, but there isn't that much news in the world! The other problem that has stemmed from the 5-minute news cycle is that online news sites aren't very well edited anymore. On any given day, I catch mistakes on CNN.com -- and not just pesky little AP style errors, either. I'm talking stories with inconsistencies because grafs were taken out and no one bothered to check if the story made sense anymore. It's so frustrating to read. I don't have much of a solution, though, other than to remove myself from the non-stop news sources and only watch the evening news and/or read the morning paper. Then I would just get news updates at most every half-day, which is all, frankly, that most people should subject themselves to.

Part 2: My life updates
I saw the Da Vinci Code on opening day, having kept myself from hearing too much about the bad reviews it had gotten at Cannes. I thought it was pretty decent -- worth seeing for a matinee or student price, definitely worth Netflix-ing -- but wasn't the best book-adaptation I've ever seen. First of all, the book built up all of its excitement in the opening scenes in the Louvre, with Langdon explaining the art history behind Da Vinci's works. Instead, in the movie, it's a race from one painting to the next, with Tom Hanks breathlessly spewing out a sentence or two that you, if you're not careful, might miss hearing altogether. I understand that in when put into action, Dan Brown's museum scene has to be rushed, even though in the book it takes up numerous chapters, in order to keep up the realistic sense of being chased, but the movie took it too far, I thought -- it ends up instead being a huge rush to get to the grail quest. Also, I was a little disappointed in the Roslyn Chapel scene -- why isn't the docent introduced as Sophie's brother, and why the unnecessary twist ab out Sophie's grandfather not really being her grandfather? That left a hole at the end, when her grandmother introduces herself but the viewer isn't sure whether the woman is her blood grandmother (in which case, where has she been all these years?) or her adopted grandmother, the husband of the Louvre curator (in which case, why is she so emotional about having been "separated" from Sophie?). I didn't like how all the Priory members just showed up all at once, as though all of them just happen to live within 5 minutes of Roslyn Chapel. Anyway, probably not as bad as the reviews said (I still haven't read them), but not the best movie I've ever seen, either.

Which brings me to another point: I hate movie reviews. I am aware of the fact that I am not a movie critic. I like movies because I like them, or I don't because I don't; you won't find me critiquing the atmosphere or the dialogue of most films. A lot of the time, I want to see a movie to be entertained, and I'm happy having such low standards. Unfortunately, that does not always mesh with a film critic's point of view, and I've found it to just not be worth my time to read movie reviews at all. You can't mention a movie without everyone around you telling you about the bad reviews it got, and that's just disappointing. Not EVERY movie is created with the intention of winning an Oscar (is it?), and that's just fine with me.

Other movies I've seen recently: Friends with Money (OK, but you felt like you were watching a play, not a movie), and Pride and Prejudice (my favorite Jane Austen book, and a great movie). In Pride and Prejudice, I again found myself witnessing a bizarre male transformation on-screen. Mr. Darcy goes from being downright ugly to being actually rather attractive physically, once he changes his attitude and behavior. A similar thing happened in Bend it Like Beckham -- Jonathan Rhys Meyers looks like he has congenital birth defects, and then all of a sudden he shows up at Jess's house looking positively hot in a white collared shirt. Same guy, completely different look. It's the magic of cinema.

In other news, Eric's sister's wedding was this past weekend, and everything went really well. A couple pictures are posted below. I feel kind of bad for Eric, because he got a lot of good-natured ribbing from his relatives about when HIS wedding was going to be, but I only feel kind of bad, because it's his own fault that it's happening :) Before going to PA for the weekend, I was at home in MD for a week, serving as Cinderella to the Cummings household. It was kind of nice doing so much cleaning and organizing, though, because it involved no brain work whatsoever, and it was very cathartic to just run load after load of laundry (there was a mysterious cat pee smell in the towel closet, so I washed everything to get rid of it) and vacuum up all the dust rabbits (too large to be bunnies, really).

Yesterday I woke up and went down to the parking lot, and my classmate Andy who lives in the building was standing in the parking lot next to an incinerated car. His wife Kristen's car caught on fire in the middle of the night, and the fire department put it out but didn't tell anyone, so they discovered it in the morning when they were leaving. The fire department says it was an electrical fire, but that seems really weird to me -- why would a car just spontaneously explode in the middle of the night; doesn't it usually happen while it's being driven or when the ignition is turned? I wonder if someone was trying to hot wire it and everything went bad. Anyway, Kristen's car is completely destroyed, and the two cars parked on either side of it were heavily damaged as well -- one of which was Andy's. Since his car was a 1987 Acura, they're just calling his totaled as well -- he found a junk yard to give him $100 for the metal. So overnight, they went from two cars to none -- I'm never going to park next to Eric again!

This week I technically started my summer research project, but in reality I won't actually have any work to do for the next week or two, so I have some time to finish (read: start) unpacking from being at home and begin my new knitting project. I love not being in school!


Paige and Brian, May 28, 2006!

Me and Eric, at the reception. The whole thing was held on a farm, which was really pretty. As you can see, I wore neither of the dresses I had previously mentioned in this blog -- I got this blue one on clearance at Ann Taylor after I won the other Ann Taylor eBay auction. This one was only $30 instead of $128 (!!!!!), and fit me much better. I'm going to try to re-sell the other one on eBay and recoup some of my losses.