i'm gonna lose my head here

today's title comes from resurrection by the temper trap.

i'm not even going to bother apologising for being a bad blogger lately because, honestly, this has just been an incredibly busy semester. banana, i don't even know how you've managed with your nine thousand languages and activities. so, instead, this is just going to be a random post about things i've been liking since my last post.

beginning with:

salad! i'm a lot little bit in love with them. actually, i'm eating one right now (one of the sinfully unhealthy ones from wendy's) but i've been craving them in all shapes and sizes. like i had a buffalo wing caesar salad at salad creations last week and it was wonderful, and i made a little one two nights ago with dried cranberries and raisins and feta cheese as a midnight snack. who knew i could like green things? the momster is certainly mystified. 

dante! this is the second semester that i've had to read the divine comedy in an english class, and this time around it's actually in two separate classes. my brit lit and italian poetry/modernism class (the full course name is "T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the Italian Trecento" and was apparently going to be longer but academic services made my professor shorten it) are overlapping all over the place. we're reading a lot of the same works (okay, in reality, it's more like "we're reading a lot." full stop, the end, sorry but no sleep for Rachel until may) in each of them, but at different times, so occasionally walking into each class feels a bit like going through a time loop. nevertheless, dante and all the other medieval poets we're reading in my italian/modernism class are actually really interesting. although i am getting a bit sick of petrarchan sonnets. poor laura. also i think i have the first canto of inferno memorised.

doctor who. pretty much self-explanatory, actually. although i would like the record to show that i plan to do this to some door in my house one day, or maybe just my bedroom door this summer.

tying in with my last obsession, british television in general. downton abbey, merlin, skins, torchwood, north & south...they're all so wonderful. and, best of all, the shorter seasons makes the writers seem to step up the quality of the episodes a lot - there are way fewer filler episodes.

in keeping with my hall's obsession with merlin/pretty people in period clothing with accents, i introduce to you Arthur Bear. the hall-es and i built him at build a bear together and we're planning to mail him around to each other over the summer. he even has a little passport so you can all sign it! i'm pretty excited.

and this is Merlin Bear, which i got for myself since it lost in the hall-e vote over which bear to build (it was a tough decision to make! also, we got a lot of weird looks from the build a bear staff). michelle the hall-e made a bunny, but i don't have a picture of it.

the history channel, which on three separate viewings has told me that the biblical story of moses is evidence of an ancient alien encounter, of various rumors and theories that abraham lincoln was a vampire, and that humanity is suffering from "amnesia" which prevents us from being able to remember/understand that our ancient ancestors clearly had contact with aliens (because how else were they able to build the pyramids?). i'm beginning to worry about the channel.

cki! i got reelected for next year. we went to our district convention and won things, too, but most of you are adept facebook stalkers so you probably already know that. and i finished the club scrapbook. well, after i put every minion i could find to work, first.

and, of course, this:

if only i'd been alive in the eighties. also, how is it that everyone in that video is, like, a multimillionaire now? and a lot of them are pundits, even. oh, and the current liverpool coach is in it, too, see if you can spot him.

i'll just leave you with this:

On the highway, on the freeway, in the airport

today's title comes from brother lee by citizen cope:

today went well. my biology class was predictably boring. my english teacher emailed to tell me he lost his paper. the roomie had a meeting with him to talk about our upcoming paper (due after thanksgiving break - i hate final papers) and reminded him to look for it (my professor is a bit of a nut) and i just got an email that he found it. here's hoping i get extra credit for the "stress and trauma" i endured. just kidding. it won't happen, but a girl can dream, right?

circle k is hosting servicefest tomorrow, which is basically a giant dance with lots of mini service projects you can do if you want to raise money for a bunch of local charities. it's going to be awesome it better be, we've been planning this thing for months. we painted the rock and chalked most of campus and hung up a bunch of flyers for it today. i was kind of sad that i was giving up on dinner with the hall-es and the rest of my usual group of friends (it's expanding! i hadn't realized just how much it had expanded until it came time to organize the secret santa. getting everyone in one place is turning into a bit of a chore. we tried to do secret santa distribution by proxy over the weekend, but that just turned into a mess, so now we're doing it during dinner tomorrow) but i'm a club officer and it would've been irresponsible of me to skip out on publicity stuff even if it was just the fun things that loads of people came to help out with and not the actual work (flyers and banners and yelling at the lady at the copy center for like fifteen minutes because she screwed up our order).

that's right - i actually did the responsible thing. be proud, everyone. and i was rewarded for it! while we were painting the rock, two of the other officers came back from the end of campus near my dorm and told me that the fire alarm had gone off while they were there. i was feeling pretty smug for getting out of a fire drill. i ran into a hall-e on the way back to my dorm after we were done painting just in time to hear the fire alarm go off again. apparently the alarm the other cki officers heard hadn't been a drill - it had been fourth floor setting a microwave on fire again, which inspired the RAs to have a fire drill tonight. needless to say, the hall-e and i turned right around and went to bingo night instead. it was fun. and we got to skip an hour (an hour! eep!) of standing in the cold outside our dorm. and, yes, we might have amused ourselves by texting the trapped hall-es/reminding them to tell us when the drill ended. what? you can't expect me to complete my moral development all in one day, can you?

after we got back, we had another skins watching party. we got through three episodes today! i'm so proud. i really love that show. i can't wait until the movie comes out.

oh, and international friendly day was horrible. germany and sweden tied (not too bad, since it was at least interesting to see how the players who were new to the national team played) and spain got flattened by portugal, 4-0 (again, not bad - it's good news for germany during the euros and world cup, and cristiano ronaldo's reactions were funny to watch). it was the england-france game that was terrible. final score? england 1-2 france. and steven gerrard got injured - when fabio capello promised liverpool to take him off after and hour and didn't. why do they even play friendlies? there's no point. save the damn liverpool captain for his club, k?

at least we got this picture out of it

yes, i'm still mad. and i have a stats test tomorrow, so i'm going to sleep now. at least i get to go home tomorrow night. oh, and there's harry potter to look forward to! 

i whip my hair back and forth

today's title comes from...seriously? do you really not know where today's title comes from? oh, fine:

the hall-es decided to start singing this randomly during today's oovoo session. now joanna the hall-e keeps singing it whenever we least expect it.

circle k had it's annual thanksgiving dinner today. it was fun. we spent a lot of time setting it up, but it was worth it for the turnout. apparently we got over sixty people (crammed into one very tiny dining room). britney and i went to go pick up the food from the caterer - bad idea. we're not exactly the largest (or muscliest) people. oh, and all the dishes were really hot and we kept forgetting to use the oven mitts when we were putting everything in the car. the drive itself was really fun. britney managed to reignite my billy idol love. i've had white wedding stuck in my head all day. but then came taking everything out of the car. we dropped a pie while attempting to open the door. half of it ended up on the floor and the other half was very smooshed but still in the box...so we did the right thing and sat down on the floor and at the other half. our impromptu munch fest was interrupted by the other board members coming to the door to see what was taking us so long. they thought we were hilarious. i still think that not letting an extremely tasty pie go to waste was a very sensible decision.

husband number three offered me his old down-filled duvet for my dorm room since i get cold easily. the momster dropped it off today. it's wonderful and soft and very, very warm...and queen-sized. which means that my poor bed is completely dwarfed by it. i recruited the hall-es to help me put the (much cuter) new cover on it and the cover was so large that michelle the hall-e crawled inside it to the far end to pull the duvet in after her - it made the covering process a lot easier. also, apparently the inside of my duvet cover is just like being in a tent. at least now we know what to do if we ever get bored - duvet cover tent/pillow fort playtime!

we eventually figured out that i could just fold the duvet in half. so now my bed is extra fluffy! it's a good thing, too. my roommates and i sleep way too much - the hall agrees. someone's always sleeping in or coming back from an early class to nap or napping before going out or going to bed early. our lights are, like, never on. at least being a room of fellow hibernators means that everyone's always very courteous of each other's sleeping time. these things are important, okay? and, yes, i realize everyone in the entire world has already seen this. i don't care, watch anyway:

i found this on youtube. i'm kind of in love with this kid's covers. i can't help it - cover songs are like catnip to me.

until the earth stops turning

today's title comes from gorecki by lamb:

liverpool lost. that's all i'm going to say about that. these past two years have been a pretty depressing time to be a supporter. i have high hopes that the new owners will do the right thing come january transfer window time, though.

i have a confession to make:

you know that iranian film class that i always complain about? well, i kind of like it now. the films are getting better as we move into the modern era, and even the ones i initially didn't like are actually pretty good. i don't know how to explain it properly. it's like...the more i learned about iran and its culture and the revolution combined with my film analysis skills getting better to make me actually appreciate the movies we've been watching. a lot of them are about kids during the revolution or after it. it's kind of surprising how easy it is to connect with child-driven plot lines, especially when a lot of them were based off of the director's real life experiences. it made me start to wonder what happened to them after the movies were over. oh, and we watched persepolis on friday. we have it at home, but i bought my own copy today. i didn't like it the first time i watched it, but now i'm a little in love with it. the same thing happened to me with pan's labyrinth. it's so strange - this is like my year of multiculturalism, or something. i'm a little crazy for spanish and iranian history right now. they're so complicated and divided and just...i should probably stop before i start writing an essay.

this craziness is starting to transfer into other things, though. like, from becoming interested in just iranian films, i've started liking foreign films in general. i hate writing that. it feels pretentious. but some of them are really good! and subtitles aren't actually that bad.

i raked leaves with circle k today. we had to get up at a horribly early hour to do it. the hall-es and i actually woke up late and ended up texting the other members for half an hour for directions to the house they were at and walking half a mile in the opposite direction because we are geniuses. it was fun, though. this one woman told us all not to quit school because we would never make it as professional leaf rakers, but i think she was just jealous. her leaf blower ate joanna's headphones, too, so we made a return trip to target so she could get new ones. while there, we saw these crimes against nature:

doesn't he look cold? also, don't you just love the dog's face in the background? it's totally judging that guy. 

poor, poor anne frank and ray bradbury do not deserve to be shelved right next to that crap. and sold for less money. 

the following are not crimes against humanity. they're just funny:

why, yes, that is her entire wardrobe (more or less) drying on her bed. 

the roomie attempted to dry two loads of laundry in one dryer. as a result, nothing got dry. and since this is a weekend, the second she left the laundry room all of the dryers were taken. so she decided to dry everything in our room, with hilarious results. 

i discovered the existence of cookies and cream hershey kisses today! i probably shouldn't have, actually. i can't stop eating them.

i think the whole world is drunk right now

in the last half hour, i have overheard such gems as:

hall-e's roommate: this is - this is - oh my god, what do we call you again?

high school senior: ehehehe, i'm cute. 

hall-e's roommate: yeah, you are. 

hall-e: who is this and why is he in our room?

hall-e's roommate: um, um, um - who is this?

hall-e's roommate's friend who walks in the open door: this is eric. he plays lacrosse.

hall-e's roommate's friend's girlfriend: hi, i'm meredith. i'm drunk. can i leave my stuff here?

hall-e: ...

this was while we were watching hercules in joanna the hall-e's room. we had a few other interruptions, too. oh, and then the roomie and i found a whole pack of drunk people just sitting on the steps outside when we went to take the trash out. oh, college.

in other random news, the hall-es and i went to central park today. we went shopping for electric blankets (mine is zebra print - it's wonderful) and went to dinner. we decided to walk to borders after, which meant cutting across a parking lot. now, today i was wearing a skirt, leggings, a giant fluffy sweater jacket, a hat, mittens, and boots. basically, every part of me besides a little square of exposed neckline was warm. keep this in mind, otherwise my next actions will seem a little...odd.

the momster got a new iPad today. she named it nemo at my request. she was texting me for advice on how to set it up, since she's not the most technologically savvy person (well, when it comes to apple products, at least). i was also texting a few other people at the same time.

and, my life being what it is, i end up texting the momster: MY BOOBS ARE COLD. instead of my apple id information. and her oh-so-sensible response?

the momster: oh my god. where are you? are you at a whorehouse? what are you doing?

me: i'm at borders.

the momster: are you sure? leave immediately! you don't know what can happen there!

ah, reason. it's so good to know that it's still a precious commodity in the world. don't worry, i managed to talk her back to (relative) sanity. not without spending a good ten minutes reassuring her that my new ownership of a (zebra print!) electric blanket wouldn't lead to me burning to a crisp in the night (the words "automatic shutoff" didn't seem to resonate with her)

also, i got another mysterious package today. this time it contained nail polish - that i definitely did not buy. i'm a little confused, to be honest. happy, since they're the two colors i most regretted not getting during my little "oh my gosh, it's cheap and on the internet" nail polish buying binge (here today, aragon tomorrow and can you tapas this? from opi) but...i definitely didn't buy them. i double checked my credit card statement just in case. and the package was also definitely addressed to me (i double checked that, too, despite the fact that one of the hall-es thinks that i would have no problem running off with any nail polish-containing packages even if they weren't mine). this is becoming very odd.

oh, and don't forget: liverpool plays tomorrow at 12:30. i'm going to go to sleep tomorrow, since i've got rake-a-thon with circle k at nine a.m.

come around sundown

today's title comes from the cutie and the followills album of the same name. it leaked! i'm listening to it now - reviews will be forthcoming...eventually. i have four papers due this week (on top of the four papers i had due last week). i'm beginning to hate school.

you know what i don't hate? justin timberlake. he and britney spears are basically the last relics of my musically-challenged childhood which i can look on without feeling endless shame. actually, watching this makes me and the hall-es all sorts of giddy. you should watch it, too:

to get the tedious recapping out of the way, here's my week in pictures:

rainy days leads to umbrella fencing in the halls. 

why do i always get the mean fortune cookies? the last one told me to eat more carrots to avoid cancer. this can't be normal.

L decided to hang out in my step stool today. she also may have decided to get stuck in it. oh, hall-es.

i was up bright and early at 7:45 this morning to volunteer at the food bank with circle k, but i didn't bring my camera or my phone, so i couldn't take pictures. it was fun, though. we did a lot of sorting and boxing, mostly. people (and businesses) like to donate some weird stuff. we had pallets full of dietary supplements called flush the fat, a bunch of ankle and knee braces, and around fifty boxes of shampoo and conditioner. that was the worst. a lot of the bottles burst in the boxes, which was disgusting to feel when you were reaching in to sort and box them - we went through a ton of paper towels cleaning off the bottles, and my hands still feel kind of slimy. the club and the hall-es and i went out to brunch afterwards, where i introduced everyone to my favorite, most unhealthy brunch food of all time: southwestern tater tot bowls. it's basically what it sounds like: a bowl full of tater tots covered in cheese, bacon bits, tomatoes, green onions, salsa, and sour cream.

...needless to say, i have since been convinced to join in on a healthy eating month. after all, i do have to get into jasmine shape. so for the next 31 days, i'm not drinking coffee or soda (i will probably cheat on the coffee - however, the hall-es seem convinced that my caffeine intake isn't healthy, so i'll have to sneak some on the side) or snacking after nine in the afternoon evening. it's going to be horrible. hopefully it'll pay off. at least it gave me an excuse to stock up on tea and hot chocolate and marshmallows at giant today.

i'm going to have a busy day of homeworking and soccer watching tomorrow (note: real madrid is being shown on espn 2 at 3 p.m. and liverpool plays at 10). i should actually probably just save this post and go to sleep, since i only had a little nap today before watching mean girls in joanna's room (also, apparently i curl up when i sleep? i had no idea that wasn't normal. i don't know, i just like to sleep with the covers over my head and apparently all the hall-es were debating on whether i was actually under the blankets or if it was just a pillow. oh, and apparently i like to hit people who try to wake me up? who knew. ) but i just feel like blogging tonight. it's been a very, very long time.

it's funny, but i've been feeling like a sponge, lately. i don't know...i guess i'm just trying a lot of things i never thought i would be interested. like aikido. it's weird and kind of hard and i fall down a lot but it's still really fun. oh, and pilates...actually, that's just hard, but we're going again this week anyway. oh, and letter writing. there's something i never thought i'd pick up - but then i realized the joys of a full mailbox and changed my mind. i wonder if my sponginess is going to stick around. i kind of hope it does, but then...well, i quite liked being a hermit. me and my room or basement or kitchen on a winter afternoon with lulu on my feet as slippers and a book or new music...well, it was nice. better than nice, actually. i'm actually ridiculously excited to get back to that during my breaks.

i guess you could call this my poem of the day, but i've been obsessing over it for, like, the last week, so i don't know if that label really applies any more:

You who never arrived 
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost 
from the start, 
I don't even know what songs 
would please you. I have given up trying 
to recognize you in the surging wave of 
the next moment. All the immense 
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt 
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and 
unsuspected turns in the path, 
and those powerful lands that were once 
pulsing with the life of the gods-- 
all rise within me to mean 
you, who forever elude me. 

You, Beloved, who are all 
the gardens I have ever gazed at, 
longing. An open window 
in a country house-- , and you almost 
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,-- 
you had just walked down them and vanished. 
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors 
were still dizzy with your presence and, 
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same 
bird echoed through both of us 
yesterday, separate, in the evening... 

- rainer maria rilke 

no post would be complete without music. in no particular order, here's what i've been listening to lately. being deprived of my usual rachel-time (and therefore, music-finding time), i need recommendations. what have you all been listening to lately?

okay, so i lied. clearly there is an order to this and clearly florence and the machine covering girls aloud deserves to be first. i've actually probably blogged this song before, just because my love of cover songs and florence has been well-documented here. you can listen to it again anyway.

circle the drain

today's title comes from the song of the same name by katy perry. it has no relevance to this post at all. it is stuck in my head, though, since this girl in my chaucer seminar was playing it so loudly that i could hear it through her headphones.

it's been a little while since i posted. i know, i know - i always promise to be a better blogger, but...well, there are only so many hours in a day. and, sadly, blogging at 4:35 in the morning (when the original draft of this post was started) doesn't lead to anything coherent. trust me - i just had to delete, like, four paragraphs and a ton of unrelated gifs because of that.

before doing anything else, i guess i should recap my week. let's see...

the hall-es and i have been busy making things. to begin with, we made a master class schedule so we could stop sending out bulk text messages to the effect of "where are you? are you in class? do you want to eat dinner?" and made copies for everyone. it's pretty:

and on friday we made glee t-shirts. michelle and i had club meetings to go to first, so we didn't get started until late friday night, but here they are:

we're wearing them right now, actually, since we just finished watching glee in my room. (it was an awesome episode, by the way. britney spears night!).

the alchy roommate lost her key on friday, so we've been having to keep the door unlocked until the lock gets replaced. it really sucked since this weekend was family weekend and i was supposed to go home friday night. i ended up unpacking all of my stuff and staying until saturday afternoon since i didn't want to leave for the weekend with all of our stuff in the room. i ended up enlisting the hall-es to watch the door so i could go home, but when i repacked my bag, i left my phone charger in the dorm.

since you all know me, you should know what a catastrophe that was for me. two whole days without my phone! it was horrible. on top of that, the momster replaced the house phones with fancy new ones that i don't know how to use, so i couldn't even stay home alone since she was all "no! what if something happens and you forget how to call me?". i ended up going to an open house with her sunday. it was alright. it was in this huge house in arlington - it had six bathrooms and nine bedrooms and a jacuzzi. i mostly sat around reading while she talked to clients. however, i did perk up during her conversation with one family. they were this awkward, horribly dressed group of people that used words like "new-fangled" and "gosh darn" and "modernizated" when referring to kitchen appliances and thought the house was "nice" but would have preferred it if the owners painted the halls tangerine, replaced the beige carpet with a "nice salmon pink", and painted all the bedrooms and bathrooms purple or green. you might think they were playing a joke or something - they weren't. they were actually two million dollar-offering, house-buying serious. oh well. i guess the world needs people with hideously decorated houses as well as nice ones.

after the open house, the momster and i went shopping at tyson's. it was wonderful. there was a giant sale on vera bradley stuff so i stocked up and came away with a free wristlet, a planner (which is ridiculously exciting, since i was completely useless without the calendar in my phone over the weekend). aren't they pretty?

oh, and i got the world's most amazing computer bag. i've been using it every day since i got it. oh, and i started in on buying fall clothes just in time - it started raining the monday after i got back on campus and has been raining ever since. however, the most important purchase of the day came in food form. specifically, this food:

this is a hummus and goat cheese salad. it's got grilled chicken and feta cheese and flat bread and tomatoes and peppers and yummy dressing and is basically the most amazing thing i've eaten in my entire life. in case you couldn't tell, i like food.

since monday, i've been busy writing four papers (four! and one of them is six pages long!), outlining my take-home midterm (two more papers, due next week), and avoiding the Giant Rain Puddle which lives outside the back door of my dorm. said avoidance is mostly occurring through the constant wearing of rain boots (wonderful) and pants (horrific). at least the rain means that everyone's wearing their rain boots and carrying umbrellas. i love getting to admire everyone's cute stuff. the coolest pair of rain boots i've seen so far had a bunch of whales and rain drops and penguins on them. they were adorable.

it's a good thing i've had cute rain boots to cheer me up, since on the health front there is no good news. remember the earring that snagged on my shirt during yoga a few weeks ago? yeah, it was healing fine until it caught on another shirt (same yoga class). so, the momster came down for a visit wednesday (bearing many of the broker open panera sandwiches, some of which i am munching on right now) and took me to the doctor to get it checked out. "checking out" in this case entailed a tetanus and meningitis shot "just in case", since apparently dorms are breeding grounds of contagion and disease and having gotten them done this summer was just not enough to guarantee my health. oh yeah, and there was a flu shot and needle-tastic antibiotics, too. my arm felt like a pincushion. it kind of still does, actually.

oh, and i got elected chair of the history committee and co-chair of the publicity/member recruiting committee in circle k (key club, basically). i'm kind of excited because freshmen couldn't vote (you have to have been a due-paying member last year to cast a vote), which is why i ran for both - i figured i wouldn't get either. i tied with another girl for the last committee, but that's okay since the committee is huge and she seems like she'll be fun to work with. it's getting its own tag now since i'm sure you'll be hearing a lot about it this year.

so, i left this post before my chaucer class and figured i would finish it when i got back. however, something Incredibly Wonderful has happened.

as you should know, there was a liverpool game today against utrecht. it started at one in the afternoon. as you probably don't know, my chaucer class starts at two, which gave me barely fifteen minutes during halftime to run to the auditorium and get the game set up (and on mute) in the back row. while i was waiting for halftime to end, i happened to glance around the rest of the room at all the other computer screens on display and saw...

THE SAME STREAM I WAS WATCHING. as in, there was another liverpool fan watching the game. and he's a boy. and he's cute. and he had a steven gerrard jersey on. and is apparently a sophomore and friends with my biology partner. still don't know his name. am still convinced i have met briefly glanced at before being overwhelmed by depression at watching my team draw against a third-rate eastern european side seen the future LOVE OF MY LIFE. why, yes, this does require all caps. baby stevie g and xabeard alonso (circa 2005, also known as the best footballing year of our lives) are up there celebrating this news. however, all of you -- if you happen to see more of this wonderful species of boy in the wild, feel free to tackle them/drug them and mail them to me/offer them my number. in this instance i have no shame.

i'm going to back to watching smallville online and working on my iranian cinema paper. smallville is still silly and unquittable; my iranian film for the week is actually pretty good. i figure it should balance out.