Quando, quando, quando.

It's a holiday! And it's a beautiful day outside. What was left of Hurricane Isaac came through at the beginning of the weekend, but he was very welcome. The rain was wonderful. Now we're back to our sunny days, which is nice, too.

A local trade-a-book store in town is being sold. I was in on Saturday buying some books for my bare bookshelves and talked to the owner about it. I think someday I would love to run a used book store! It would be very different, but I've always enjoyed her store and her business has been there forever, it seems like. I remember going in with my mom when I was little. I hope whomever buys the business keeps it going and doesn't run it into the ground. It's tempting to buy a business like that when you know it's already got a pretty steady clientele, and a good reputation? I'm not ready to own a business. But someday? It would be nice. Maybe in a place like Loblolly-by-the-sea? (Okay, maybe that's too much like the movie "The Love Letter" with the terrible acting job by Blythe Danner.) But, still. A small down on the eastern coast should have a little used bookshop. And I might be just the gal to open one around there some day. I would definitely have a bookshop dog. Some kind of older, lazy mutt that likes to lay next to the counter or slowly wander the aisles now and again. Not one that would bolt out the door every time a customer came in, or one that liked to bark at people. Something calm. I got so into the idea on Saturday that I began a pinboard on Pinterest for it. Most of my friends on there have pinboards about their future baby or their future wedding or something. I have 'Future Bookshop'.

Not sure how great business-sensey this is, but I love it anyway.

What else? So, I returned to facebook, mostly just in name. But, a few of my co-workers told me about Words with Friends and so I promised to try that out and see how I liked it. Well, it's fun. I like Scrabble. But then I wandered a little further into the games area and came across SongPop. Good lord. Addiction central. I've been playing it a lot this weekend. I'm nearly kind of burned out. Nearly, but not quite. I really love music trivia games that include song clips. This is right up my alley! Did I mention that I won a game like this at a baby shower last weekend? I did. And I usually do okay on trivia nights when one of the rounds is a music trivia round. I really love it. I even took a class in high school where the tests were almost entirely done like this with little snippets of a song and you had to name the artist or title (and sometimes year). It was one of my favorite classes. SongPop is addicting and awesome and is bringing back memories of that class with songs by Connie Francis and Paul Anka. I'm sad to say I've missed a few that I probably knew back in high school. I really like that you can challenge random opponents. I've had opponents from all over. Some of the challenges I've played have been French Songs that I've never ever heard of. Or some guy that really loves Metal music. But, it's all very interesting and fun. One thing is for sure: It is all making me realize that maybe I don't need a tablet computer for much of anything except these cool apps that you can get on them. Sigh. Maybe for Christmas?

Also this weekend, I discovered that Jeff City is a TWO Jimmy Johns town now! (Possibly more, if there is one on the east side. I don't know.) But, there's a new one now right smack in downtown! If I were really into taking a walk one Saturday, I can walk there for lunch sometime. This makes me happy. I love JJs. 

And, lastly: My dad and I made homemade pasta yesterday. I'd never made pasta from scratch before but it turned out pretty well! It was easy to make, even without a pasta maker, and it was really really delicious. I'll eat pasta anytime and it's always pretty awesome, but I could tell that this was better than the normal store-bought packaged pasta. We made trofie, and they were slightly larger than they probably should have been, but still so good. My dad invented a pesto cream type of sauce and it was excellent with some asiago cheese bread we found at Hy-Vee. It was good *pig snorts*.

All in all, this has been a great weekend so far! I'm feeling pretty rested, too. It's nice to have an extra day to bum around the house. I actually got up and decided to see if I could jog around in a pair of sneakers that I have (since I can't afford new tennis shoes and my old ones didn't make it back from the Color Run). I went for a little walk/jog and ended up stopping and playing a couple of rounds of bocce at Washington Park this morning before continuing back to my car. It was fun, although there are some creepy parts of the trail that I went by today. There's something innately creepy about walking under overpasses, you know? Just tends to give me the creeps. I know I'm not the only one either, because when I was walking back to my car, there was a woman walking a bit in front of me and she slowed down when we were coming up to the first of several overpasses and she took off her sunglasses and looked all around before she continued under them. I felt less wussie when I did the same. It just seems like a good place for bad stuff to happen. But nothing bad happened. Probably the anxiety helped get the blood pumping even more than it was with the exercise, yes? Sure. 

Happy Labor Day!

We've come a long long way together.

Happy December 19th. It's National Oatmeal Muffin Day.

This weekend was busy + fun. It was bun. I graduated (on National Underdog Day) and it was good times. The commencement speech was over before I even realized I was listening to the commencement speech. And then I didn't fall down or anything! I competently put the hood thingy on the gown. My cap only fell off a couple of times and I didn't fall asleep during the eons of doctoral candidates getting hooded and handshaked and hugged and whatnot. I was amused throughout the ceremony by a handful of supporters of a new doctor named Saif Somethinorother, whose friends took it upon themselves to bring posterboard and write out different words and spell them out in the audience. They had a little rubber horn that they honked when they had the words spelled out so that Saif would see them. They first spelled "Saif". Then they spelled "Egypt" (where I assume Saif is from). They were doing well up to that point. Then they tried to do "We (heart) Saif" except the fella who was put in charge of the (heart) and the S got them turned around so when they honked and everyone looked it said "Wes (heart) Aif" until the guy sheepishly switched it. It kept me awake through the ceremony watching to see what they would come up with next. Thanks, Saif, for graduating in December and having such awesomely amusing and supportive family and friends.

Look at that happy girl with her empty diploma case. Aw.

So, there were also some parties, at which I played some games. It was fun. "Scattergories" was played. I like Scattergories. It always creates some laughs. One of the best ones from the weekend was when one person read the category wrong and instead of listing 'things that grow' that began with an M, she read it as 'things that glow', and she went through then entire round of people saying things like 'Monkeys' and 'Marigolds" and never blinked an eye. Someone became skeptical when she shouted out 'Moon rocks' and then when she realized what she'd done the game kind of fell apart for a while with laughing and mocking, because wouldn't you question someone else's answer when they shout out 'Monkey' and you are under the assumption that the category was glowing things? I arrived late due to dealing with another part of the weekend: Beatrix had to have a little surgery and she's not a patient that handles healing very well. At least not when she's left alone. She's getting better, I think. She's just not any good at resting and not jumping around when she's wounded. I also saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I liked the first one and I think the second one is better. But what I really like about it is that it's artistically done with the special effects and things. I love the way they tell the story with the fast motion and then the slow motion mixed. The first one was like that too, and I just really enjoy going to the movies more when the film is actually awesomely shot like that rather than just watching a long tv-show type movie that's got nothing all that interesting about the way its filmed. Nice job, Guy Ritchie. 

Then, I attempted baking. Today was my first day of being a full-time worker bee rather than a student worker at my job. And it was also the holiday party. And snack day. And I wanted to bring lots of stuff. So I made a cake, sugar cookies, and attempted peppermint bark. I am more Julia Child than Martha Stewart. I am more of the gang who believes that if you drop something and you're alone in the kitchen, you can just pick it up and continue on as if nothing happened. It's sort of a 'if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it' kind of philosophy on cooking, I know. But it seems to work okay. Except the cake overflowed the pan it was in and dumped out all over my oven. I accidentally put too much peppermint flavoring into the peppermint bark and it turned out more like peppermint leather. After adding more chocolate though, it finally became more like bark. The sugar cookies turned out great, but the chocolate chip ones I also made are really sticky and have kind of molded into one giant cookie that holds the form of the glass bowl I was trying to keep them in...

But looks are somewhat deceiving! The cake tastes really really good. Half it was eaten today. I put a sign on it that said what it was (Chocolate Pear Spice Cake) and also that it 'tastes better than it looks'. I also kind of guilted a couple of people into trying it. (They all liked it.) The sugar cookies were a huge hit. They taste really good. Even a guy who's mother is a baker told me the cookies were really good. How 'bout THEM apples?! And the peppermint bark...well. One person tried it and said it was 'fresh'. Hardly anybody ate it. I don't blame them. It's a little strong. I won't eat it if I bring it back home.

Oh, holiday baking, you and I are not always compatible. But in a blindfolded taste test, that overflowed cake could be a real contender for winning. Really. It's pretty good. Here's a closeup of the cake, but not the overflowing part.

Nom nom nom.

Also, I was watching "Love and Other Drugs" earlier (not a bad movie, especially being able to watch Jake Gyllenhaal be all adorable and stuff for a couple of hours. It's a pleasant way to spend some time.) and Fatboy Slim's song "Praise You" came on during a scene and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. "We've come a long long way together...through the hard times and the good...I have to celebrate you baby. I have to praise you like I shou-ou-ou-ould-d-d-d-d-d-d-d."