You don't know how lucky you are.

Yay! Robert Griffin III is the Heisman winner for the year! I'm proud! I always knew that if Baylor started getting their track fellas on the football team, they'd start going somewhere! Yaaay! And, their basketball team is doing fantastically well also! Congrats, Baylor! One of the many reasons I was happy about MU's move to the Southeastern Conference is that I no longer have to divide my loyalties in the Big 12. Now I have a clear and unequaled loyalty to one team in Big 12 and one team in SEC. I personally feel better about the whole situation...but, enough about memememe.... Back to the winner:

[Aside from thinking this is a great picture, the fact that it's taken in Austin at UT and all the saddy sad (in more ways than one) longhorns fans are all upset at losing is icing on the cake.]

[p.s.: If you're a longhorns fan and you're upset by this entry...well, I feel sad for you. I suggest you find a new team to support.]

Live, you don't have to look back, but if you ever do, you know where I'm at.

So, Albert Pujols is moving to LA to play for the Angels. I'm glad it's an American League team and we won't have to play him all that often. I like the Angels. I like all the California teams. Well, I like them all plus I feel really sorry for the Dodgers. I'm not sure what will happen to that team. But, back to Albert: I think this is a pretty cushy job. He can be a DH on that team and in that way, they might get 10 years out of him. Maybe. If he doesn't have to play first base and bat in the same game? I think it works out well for him. The Cardinals couldn't have afforded to keep him for that long because he would have to play defense and it would have been a sad sight to see him get traded or something. I think I prefer to see him leave like this. He and LaRussa together. After Pujols is done with baseball, I hope he returns to St. Louis. I like to think he would come back to us.

I got an e-mail request to complete a survey from MU regarding my post-graduation plans. It was multiple choice. Under the question of post-graduation plans, the given choices were:

Do volunteer work.

Start a family.

That was it. Two possible answers. What the hell? What about 'Work Full-time', 'Travel', 'Take Up New Hobbies'? Or 'None of the above', at the very least? I had to scroll to the top and make sure this was actually MU's survey and not Baylor's.

I finally saw Mizzou play basketball on Tuesday night. I was in class at a pizza place and they had the game on TV. MU vs. Villanova in NYC. It was good. I hadn't had a chance to catch any of MU's bball games this season. I plan to go to at least one in the coming weeks, and I knew they were doing really well, but it was fun to get to see them in action. They look fantastic. So far, so good, boys! Basketball is definitely my favorite collegiate sport.

I'm on the lookout for a graduation outfit. I'm not sure if I really want to buy a dress for it. I have several dresses that I could probably make some sort of funky winterish celebratory outfit out of. I might have one of those fashion show evenings tonight. You know what I mean? Where you basically pull everything out of your closet and try as many things on to come up with different combos and see what looks hideous and what turns out to look totally awesome? I'm hoping to lean toward more of the 'totes awesome' side.

Present for Kenzi.

I actually sewed something. A circle skirt. A beautiful dark green corduroy gathered circle skirt that's perfect to wear for the holiday season. I was so looking forward to wearing it.

However, it's large enough for an elephant. Really.

The yoke part of the pattern didn't work because I was having trouble with the lining and gathering the fabric and it just wasn't going through the sewing machine. "Never fear!", I thought to myself, "I know how to make elastic waistbands." So, I thought I'd just do that instead of the fitted yoke with the belief that the elastic would scrunch the fabric up enough to fit me. No so, blogger reader. Not. So. I really do think it would fit a large hippo or a small elephant.

I'm contemplating sending it to the zoo as a Christmas gift for the new baby elephant, Kenzi. She'd look awfully cute in a dark green corduroy skirt...

Hmm. What sewing idea shall I ruin next?

Hmm. Arms are overrated.

The refashioned shirt died. Armholes killed it.

Sad face.

I will stick to skirts and pants and leave the shirts and armholes for when I get [much] better at this deal.

Robert Heinlein (also, my Children's Lit Professor's mantra)

Slight technical difficulties

Tonight I decided that I could wait no longer to begin messing with my sewing machine. I wanted to refashion a shirt that I bought last year from Modcloth and that I have always loved the fabric, but the fit and style of the shirt is really unflattering:

I began straight away, because I'm an impatient person.

I wish the lighting in this particular room was less yellow-y, but nevertheless, it's the same shirt with the sleeves and neckline cut out. So, then I went to my sewing machine. I had checked it over earlier this week and noticed that I was missing certain parts. Nothing that wouldn't allow me to sew a basic stitch, though. I have things ordered and they're on their way, but I thought that I could easily sew straight stitches to refashion this top into a pleated v-neck button-down tunic for summer. However...the needle is bent and so now I have to find a new needle tomorrow for the machine. 

I was not deterred (initially) and continued on to cut the sleeves and then handsew them together to make the strips that would become the neckline pleats: 

It wasn't too bad. I don't mind handsewing, actually. But, I draw the line at handsewing the pleats to the collar. That will wait until after I find a new sewing machine needle. But, I did pin the pleats down so I only have to sew them down and try to finish the sleeves and collar edges to complete this! I feel good about the process so far. I haven't ever tried a refashion quite this complex (and it's not even that hard), but so far I think it's working out.

Still, until the sewing machine is back in working order, the refashion is stalled out at this stage:

And while I was cutting and pinning and handsewing, I looked up and saw Bea in the tree:

 G'night.

[Travis Barker drum break]

"I am so glad you are a part of our profession!" I got that sentence in an email from my practicum professor after I submitted my final paper and evaluation yesterday. How sweet is that?! I felt all warm and snuggly. She had been apprehensive about me doing my practicum where I was because of the arson early on in the semester, but I said I wanted to stay and I learned a lot about disaster recovery in the practicum, and that's what I wrote about in my paper. In the end, I think my professor was pleased that I had still been able to learn things despite the arson, and even though it wasn't quite the education that other students had taken away from their practicums. Now I have a pretty clear understanding of what it takes to try to fix one guy's drunken rampage. That guy still hasn't been charged with anything. I guess they've found him mentally incompetent or something? I think he was actually just drunk and likes fire. Which...I actually went to girl scout camp with a girl who was a pyromaniac. I remember a few of us sneaking into the girls bathroom cabin at night and watching her set fire to the bathroom sinks using hairspray. That's the first time I ever saw fire actually dance. You could just turn on the faucet to put the fires out. It was actually kind of pretty as long as it was contained like that. Pyromania certainly wasn't on the Girl Scout camp agenda, but you'd be surprised what happens at Girl Scout camp. Someday I'll tell you about the shanking that occurred in my group during my final summer. 


On to more recent events, though:


Lots of stuff can happen in a month. Early November, I was waiting to find out if I passed my comps, job-hunting, taking care of Iris, and driving Tinker all over the place. Fast-forward to now and I'm prepping for graduation, have a full-time job starting the day after graduation, have Beatrix the fastest cat on four legs, and have a new-to-me car named Dewey. Dewey is a Mazda3 and he's awfully pretty. I drove 5 cars all over town and had probably the most patient car salesman ever. He only looked slightly annoyed one time when he got a car out and then I got in to drive it and drove it halfway around the parking lot and was like, 'No. This is not for me.' and parked it and asked to drive another one. Although it could also be that he couldn't get out of the car either because of some bizarre child-locking issue on that car, too. But, by the end of the sale, he was (of course) feeling much more positive and he even went and filled Dewey's tank up with gas for me! 
Here's a stock photo of the car via Google. Imagine it in a pale blue color and you'll understand how awfully adorable Dewey is:

That front grill looks like its smiling, doesn't it? What a cheerful, lovely car. 

I was kind of bubbly and excited getting the keys. I wasn't really looking forward to the entire experience because I felt like there were too many choices and I didn't want to waste anybody's time by test driving a lot of cars, but after doing research I decided that showing up and driving 4 would be the right thing to do. So, I drove 4 2010 models: Ford Focus (the one I wouldn't drive onto the road, only on the parking lot), Toyota Corolla (my second choice car. I really liked it. It was incredibly quiet. And the cheapest car, too.), Subaru Impreza (Loud, loud, loud. And Subaru redesigned the front seat to make it super uncomfortable. I like Subarus, but I'm not sold on the pricetag. I think other small cars are a better deal if you absolutely don't need to have AWD.), and then the Mazda3 (semi-quiet ride, comfy seats, roomy, awesome interior design, all-around the best of the 4.). Dewey was the second mazda3 that I drove. He was walled in by many other cars, so I drove an easier-to-get-out black one first. But, I'm just not that into black cars. And since I had a choice, I opted for Dewey, the blue one.


Also, my godmother is out of the hospital and at home! She's really interested in writing but has never been sure what to write about. Now she has something to write about and she's decided she will use this experience to start writing, so that's good. She's got a lot of hospital stories now. Especially Thanksgiving-hospital stories and they're all kind of funny as long as you don't have to actually spend a lot of time in a hospital. If you ever have been in one or have had someone in one for an extended stay, you probably already know how completely uninformed most of the hospital nurses and doctors are when it comes to patients. They never know what's going on because they have so many patients coming and going and they can't keep it straight. It's understandable, but kind of backward. You have so many different docs, nurses, techs, even the food people; nobody's really got a true idea of what's going on. Someone brings in a machine to hook the patient up to something and then they leave for a second to check on something and while they're gone, a nurse comes in and turns the machine off and leaves, and the tech comes back and gripes at the patient for turning off their machine. It's a comedy of errors, but if you make it out alive, it can lead to some doozies as far as stories go. Maybe my godmother will write a book about it now. She's got a killer wit, so I bet whatever she writes would be hilarious.  


I feel like I'm kind of back to neutral again after the last month. Things are different, but better. 

Coming to you LIVE from the internets: Literature fun.

E.A. Poe meets Jay-Z.

Shakespearean influences.

Awesome literary wallpaper courtesy of Mr Perswall. The company has super cool wallpaper designs on their website.

The literary United States! I love visual representations like this. The only thing better would be if someone could come up with a subway map for literature. I love subway maps the most.