kelculator

I dyed a white dress (I don't like white) blue today. It turned out really well! The dye was really easy to use, too... but unfortunately this exposes me to a lot of dangerous possibilities. Like buying a whole lot of white socks and a whole lot of dye. Or sheets. Or t-shirts. Or anything else made of fabric, really. Sigh.

In other news, I am suppressing the urge to go out and buy spray paint to paint the three canvases that I bought last month... logic tells me I should wait until I know what colors will match the décor of wherever I'll be living, but my right index finger is twitching, and our lawn doesn't have any colorful patches on it.

at 10:31 PM | 2 comments    

Some kids call me by other babysitters' names.
Some kids call me Mom.
Some kids call me Babysitter.
Lots of kids just call me You.
A few kids call me Kel, although some pronounce it "cow."
Many kids call me Karen.
One kid calls me Carrot.

This evening, I had a five-and-a-half-year-old tell me just how old I was. She was trying on one of her mom's dresses, and putting on some of her mom's jewelry, and told me that she wished she was old enough to put on her mom's lipstick too.

"When I'm old enough," she told me, "I'll get to wear my mom's lipstick with all this. But you might be dead by then."

"I sure hope not!" I said.

"Why, because you want to see me?"

"Well, I would like to, but also it won't be very long before you're old enough, so I expect that I'll still be alive."

I had no idea that I was THAT old. But apparently, I won't live past another decade...

at 9:12 PM | 1 comments    

Step One: Procure yourself a hide-and-seek playing location. I suggest a house where there are dozens of hiding places for a four year old, and three for a six foot tall 22-year-old.

Step Two: Procure yourself a hide-and-seek partner. Choose an intelligent four-year-old who knows all the hiding places in her house and can fit in the majority of them.

Step Three: Procure yourself a "challenge." I suggest a 14-month-old who is just learning to talk, and coos and babbles all day long. Oh yeah-- she doesn't like the dark and gets noisily confused every time you carry her into a closet and shut the door.

Step Four: Add a second challenge. Playful German Shepherds (the dog, not European sheepherders) are particularly effective. Said dog should follow you around and sniff/whine at the doors of the closets you go inside.

Step Five: Play hide-and-seek! Tell the four-year-old to count to thirty, and run off while she counts as fast as she can, accidentally skipping from 23 to 27. Ask her to count again, because you've barely gotten yourself and the baby out of the room. She does, and you find a bathroom door to hide behind. You pull the door as close to you as you can, and the one-year-old is intrigued. Hey look, the door MOVES! She wants to play with that. She pushes at the door. You pull it towards you, grab her hand, and help her to "dance" to keep her distracted. This works for a minute, at which point the dog is whining by the bathroom, the four-year-old is close by, and the one-year-old wants to say "Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba brrrrrrrr." (That last collection of letters represents the recently learned lip-trill trick.) Then the baby grabs the door, and holds it as she peeks her head out, says "BA!" and gives away the clever hiding place.

I love babysitting.

at 2:04 PM | 1 comments    

I will write something more substantial later, but I haven't updated my blog in a while-- and unless you stalk me on Facebook or see me every day, you're unlikely to know the news.
In the past two weeks:
- finished exams and moved back to Illinois (still have that 4.0!)
- got engaged to Matthew (we're getting married in April)
- got my driver's license
- bought a car
- grew eight inches taller and decided to wear a mohawk (kidding about this one)

So it's been eventful. Once I've finished unpacking and found time to breathe, I will write more.

at 12:34 PM | 2 comments    

I just tried to check the TV schedule online, and got very confused. Here are the times listed, starting at 1:00 and going in "half hour intervals."
Click to enlarge:

at 2:00 PM | 3 comments    

My resumé is coming close to having more Greek on it than English. (That's an exaggeration: technically, it's very far away.)

I was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa today. The former gets cool points for actually giving me a pin-- I'd have to buy one for Phi Beta Kappa. Sheesh. But Phi Beta Kappa gets cool points for giving me a folder to put my certificate in. Neither gets cool points for the refreshments, which were mediocre.

So now I'm a Phi Beta Kappa Phi Kappa Phi Sigma Alpha Iota Pi Delta Phi Mu Alpha Theta. Nice.

In other news, the next time I do laundry, it'll be FREE! (To me.) Two weeks until I'm outta hot, humid Kirksville and back in hot, humid Chicago.

[On a related note such as A flat, can anyone think of words other than "gonna" and "wanna" that are technically wrong but accepted in print? My spell checker doesn't like "outta," but I can type "gonna" and "wanna" without inciting a red squiggle.]

at 11:31 PM | 12 comments    

I wrote it. Today. The last to-do list of the semester. WOOHOO!!
Eighteen lines of homework tasks that comprise the last eighteen homework tasks of the semester. Then it's summer.
And I've already crossed off two lines.

at 10:40 PM | 0 comments    

So... guess what happens if you stay several days in a town that has weird-tasting water, where you're given a half cup of apple juice for breakfast and a can of pop for lunch and the restaurant's too busy to refill your water glass at dinner. You get... dehydration! It was worst on Saturday, when all I consumed was orange juice and three caplets of Dramamine. That's not healthy. I slept for about four hours in the van, and kept the motion sickness in check until we got back to Truman. Then I took a nap for three hours. Then I spent the next few hours forcing myself to stay awake and making myself drink about two cups of water. You know you're dehydrated when even drinking water makes you feel horribly sick. I managed to stay up until nine, then slept through the night.

And, good news good news, I'm back to normal! I've been hungry three times today, so far. I ate soup for breakfast, soup and chicken for lunch, and I'm about to go get dinner. I realized this morning, when my stomach grumbled for the first time in a week, that I hadn't actually felt hungry since before I got the flu. Nice to be healthy again.

at 5:46 PM | 2 comments    

So, remember how last semester I mentioned that I was working on a paper about epic heros and their monsters? Well, I wrote that paper, and I submitted it to the National Conference for Undergraduate Research, and I got accepted, and Truman funded me as part of its delegation, and at the moment I'm in La Crosse, Wisconsin, sitting on a comfy hotel bed. Timeline up until now:
- November: wrote the paper
- January: found out it was accepted to NCUR
- February: wrote on my to-do list "prepare NCUR presentation"
- end of March: actually did
- April: finished cutting down the paper
- March and April: had at least one performance each week, and probably strained my throat quite a bit...
- April 12: practiced the presentation three times, out of the planned eight practice run-throughs
- April 13: got the flu
- April 14: lost my voice
- April 15: developed a really bad cough, but got over the flu
- April 16: barely managed to have my voice be audible during my presentation, which did go really well. I was the third speaker in the time slot, but there wasn't a fourth, so the moderator let me go over, which was good-- I was about four minutes over because of my voice. There was one professor there from the university who's teaching a course on heroes, and I think she must have asked her class to come for extra credit-- she told me beforehand that she was really looking forward to my talk, and then right before I started about thirty extra people filed in. Most of the audiences I was in had about 10-15 people... and I had an audience of 40 or so. That was cool. And they asked really good questions, that I had good answers to. And then we headed back to the hotel and I coughed a lot and lost be voice the rest of the way again.

I like Truman's perspective on sending people to conferences: since we're representing Truman, they don't make us pay for food. And whoever made up the budget is nuts, because they give us $25 a day! Which is awesome. Especially since breakfast and lunch are included at the conference. So I've eaten prime rib, and cheesecake (twice), and soup, and all sorts of delicious things. And I bought some gummy butterflies and a present for a friend (Kristen-- I got you an ice cube tray that makes seal-shaped ice cubes, for your ice-cube tray collection. Don't let me forget to give it to you!) and a pair of freshwater pearl earrings. So in conclusion, my rural public university put me up in a fancy hotel and bought me prime rib and pearls. Ha.

It has been a wonderful few days with good friends and good presentations and good food and fun shopping. It'll be annoying to go back to Kirksville and have to do homework (yuck) and write papers (yucker). But, then again, I do only have two more weeks of classes before exams and summer!

The End
(of this post, not of anything more substantial)

at 10:12 PM | 0 comments    

- laundry soap
- laundry booster
- quarters
- laundry

Oh, wait... idiomatic expression for an exhaustive list. Right:

- The last time I bought Quaker oatmeal was in high school. There were dinosaur facts on the packages. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, and there are the SAME facts on the packages. Question: though they redesigned the box, did they keep the same package design? Or is it the SAME oatmeal that was being sold years ago?

- A few weeks ago a Japanese linguist gave a talk at Truman about his research on second language acquisition. It was interesting. But what I remember most vividly is that he used a handkerchief to wipe his nose. Ian Fleming said that the Japanese don't use them in such a way, and I believed him.

- I was so frustrated that I couldn't find my copy of the St. John Passion in my iTunes library, since I was SO sure I had it. Searched for "Bach St. John," "St. John," "John," and had no luck. Spent a long time trying to track one down from various libraries... only to have a movement pop up in shuffle... from the Johannes Passion.

- Over Spring Break I did some resale shopping with my mom, my good attitude being part of my birthday gift to her. I didn't grumble or complain once. And for $40, I got a Dooney and Bourke purse... they go for $300 on ebay. Good deal.

- Over Spring Break, we went shopping a lot, trying to find me a white dress or white skirt to wear for Sigma Alpha Iota initiation. We went all over the Chicago suburbs, looked at dozens of stores, and had no luck. Last weekend, on a snowy day in teensy little Kirksville, we found a really really nice white dress at the dinky little JCPenny here. (No kidding-- it's the size of one department in a "regular" department store.)

- Also over Spring Break, I went to see the Abduction from the Seraglio with my boyfriend, and I get most of the jokes in "The Abduction of Figaro" now. And my parents took us to see a farce called "Lend me a Tenor," which was decent.

- Also over Spring Break, I started to watch a movie online (a made-for-TV adventure movie spoof, which I hadn't been able to watch on actual TV because of having no time). Then I became too busy to continue, and then I came back to school and was super busy, and all in all, I didn't get to watch the last twenty minutes of it for a week and a half, during which time it was in a minimized window in my dock, being annoying.

- I know I've been this busy before, but it's hard to remember one. During the two weeks after Spring Break, I had, on average, 1-2 hours of free time each day, in which to eat meals, do homework, and practice for all of the concerts and recitals I was involved in.

- On March 22nd, my SAI pledge class (although we call them MIT classes) had our recital. I performed a recorder/flute duet, a French horn/clarinet/soprano trio, a choral piece, and a ridiculous PDQ Bach song. Don't know how I got involved in a third of the program... mysterious. I also organized everything, designed the program, and baked...

- PRETZELS!!!!!!!!! They turned out beautifully. I will post the recipe after I've made them again and tweaked it a bit. Note to self: do not store fresh, hot pretzels in an airtight container... the steam will take away the crispiness.

- On March 28th, my parents and boyfriend came into town for the weekend to watch me perform the St. John Passion with my choir and the orchestra and all the professional soloists. I have a new tied-for-favorite instrument, the viola de gamba. It's like a prettily carved cello with six strings, that has a really rich sound kind of like an oboe. Listen to this.

- Over break I made lamb meatballs poached in lemon juice, and they were okay. I don't think I'll make them again, but my parents really liked them.

- In a week I'm to be inducted into Sigma Alpha Iota, a women's music fraternity. (It's called a fraternity because we induct men as honorary members and because all the music Greek organizations are called fraternities.) And then two weeks or so after that, I'm getting inducted into Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa, which are fancy-schmancy honor societies. The latter is only for those who have a very liberal artsy education... in translation, for those with few job prospects. No pre-med, pre-law, business, education, etc. allowed. I feel honored and discouraged at the same time.

- I have rehearsals for like 15 hours a week.

- This weekend, my a cappella group has its Spring Concert. But the stupid Student Activities Board scheduled some famous band on the same night... we don't expect a huge audience.

- The weekend before last, I had a logic test coming up, but had a lot of other homework to do... I therefore made a personal ultimatum that I was NOT ALLOWED to even TOUCH my logic notebook until I had finished all of my other homework. I worked very efficiently, because I wanted to get to the logic.

- That same weekend (with the lots of homework and the logic test and the MIT recital) I had a paper to write, and I did save that for last... I started it when I got home after the post-recital festivities... at 12:30 AM. At 2:30, there was a not-a-drill fire drill. I felt lucky to be already clothed, unlike the 400 people who had to go outside in their pajamas. I wrote another paragraph while we were waiting outside, and finished the paper by 4:30. (I then got about four hours of sleep, and woke up to edit the paper, which had some really interesting late-night grammar in it.)

- That next day, after the crazy week and the recital and the lack of sleep, I found out that I can survive alright on autopilot. Thanks to one of my classes (I won't name names...), I have gotten very good at looking interested even when I'm not paying attention at all. I even take notes, solve problems, and answer questions, somehow. Well, it helps that the professor takes five times as long to say things as he needs... as long as I pay attention at the right moments, I seem like I'm glued to his every word.

- In Psycholinguistics, we talked a lot about slips of the tongue. And yes, I will analyze yours. My last good one was a reiteration (repeating something instead of pulling out new vocab): "contagious Morse code" instead of "contagious strep throat." Nice.

- I stole the label from an eraser in my tutoring room, because it's horrifying. All of Truman's erasers are this brand, School Smart. Find the grammar error... then cringe at the juxtaposition of the brand name and description.


- I have successfully not eaten meat and fasted appropriately for ALL of Lent this year! Usually, I accidentally eat meat at least once a year, but so far, my record is clean. (Only one more week to mess it up...)

Plans for this weekend:
- I actually do have to do laundry.
- Sweet Nothings (a cappella group) gig tomorrow.
- Sweet Nothings concert tomorrow!
- Singing in a graduate conducting recital on Sunday.
- Singing for Palm Sunday on Sunday.
- French dinner on Sunday.
- Homework, homework, homework, homework.
- And sleep.

The End.
(p.s. I really will try to post more often... lots of things happen in my life and some of them are even interesting. The frequency of these happenings, however, impedes any sort of regular posting.

at 7:00 PM | 1 comments    

I stayed up until 4:30 (that's AM) finishing a paper, and woke up at 9:30 to edit it. I used up all my energy going to classes, drank a gross protein juice drink before teaching French for two hours, and then came home to take a short nap before getting up to do some work and go to rehearsal. The work bit never happened, because my brain has such low functioning power at the moment.

On the bright side, I was tired enough today that EVERYTHING seemed funny. I even made up two jokes.

• One joke, you can tell people. I promise, it's not sophisticated at all.

Q: What do musical German chickens say?
A: Bach Bach Bach

It's not even funny. But when I made it up, it was hilarious.

• This one, you have to look at. And it's slightly more sophisticated, and funnier.

(And yes, I realize that it looks like I missed by a bit and made a secant... just ignore that.)

That, in case you were wondering, is what I was doing instead of working for the past hour. Well, not the entire hour-- I also checked my e-mail, ate some oatmeal (more about oatmeal when I post the big long post of random stuff) and played cards on my computer.

at 8:55 PM | 2 comments    

I promise I will update about my life as soon as I have time. At the moment, I expect that to be Monday night. So you'll just have to wait.

But in the meantime (or the nicetime, if you will), enjoy this amazing collection of Simpsons linguistic jokes.

at 10:27 AM | 0 comments    

So once upon a time, I was a little (well, six foot tall but younger) freshman taking Foundations of Mathematics, a course that teaches a bit of linear algebra and all the proof techniques you need to go on to higher math. Proof class. Approximately three hours of homework every day for four months. A LOT of homework. Tons of proofs.

For years, I've had a habit of watching movies while doing my homework. It's a way of putting something innocuous in the background that I can mostly ignore, that helps me to focus-- it cuts down on other distractions. (Probably mostly because I don't surf the internet while watching movies...)

When I was taking Foundations, I began a semester-long James Bond marathon, where I watched every James Bond movie, in chronological order. And then, since they were all blurred in my memory and mixed with mathematical theorems, I watched them all again. It became kind of a tradition: watch a James Bond movie, work on my proofs, etc.

Then towards the end of the semester, I realized that I could remove nervousness before Foundations tests by watching fifteen minutes of a James Bond movie before heading over. They put me in the right frame of mind. I decided that I'd somehow conditioned myself to do proofs best while watching action movies, and continued watching James Bond up until the exam... which I aced.

Fast forward.

This semester, I'm taking Logic. It's more informal logic than I'd done before, but last week we started doing proofs... right around when my current insatiable craving for James Bond movies began. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. I've found myself putting off my logic homework until I can go to the library and get more movies. I honestly do proofs better, understand logic better, and work more efficiently when I have a James Bond movie on in the background. It's kind of ridiculous. Conditioning at its finest.

Unusual input: currently watching Iron Man and Enchanted, depending on what homework I'm working on, and reading Colonel Sun in addition to Russian Harry Potter.

at 6:57 PM | 1 comments    

Today I.... STOOD ON MY TOES!!!!

For the past seven months, I haven't been able to run, stand on the toes of my left foot, walk super-long distances without taking a painkiller, etc. I had to switch habits so that when I kneel in church I put my right leg down first to keep my toes straight. I now instinctively stand on only five tippy-toes when I have to reach for something. But today I stood on ALL of them! Woohoo!

They still hurt early in the morning or when it's particularly cold or rainy, and it still hurts to run, and they don't have full range of motion, but I declare my not-fully-broken toes healed. (Despite the ER doc who said, "They should feel fine after a week.")


Unusual Input:
Watched The Spy Who Loved Me and Iron Man
Finished Catch Me if you Can and restarted reading Гарри Поттер и Философский Камень (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in Russian)

Other than that, the past few days have been homework, homework, homework. Plus several hours of baking for an SAI bake sale, and then several hours of selling baked goods at an SAI bake sale.

at 3:58 PM | 1 comments    

Yesterday I watched Diamonds are Forever, chatted in French for an hour or so, and went to see the Mikado (by Opera à la Carte, who came to Truman as part of the Kohlenberg series-- I saw Hubbard Street 2 as part of that series last month). I read five chapters of Catch Me if You Can, and had bizarre dreams involving lots of airports, sociology, and filling in long questionnaires.

Today I watched Live and Let Die, listened to a lecture about sexuality between the Puritan and Victorian periods, and went to Ash Wednesday Mass.

So far, my abnormal input is mostly James Bond and novels. And since I was so industrious over the weekend, I've had very little homework, so plenty of time to relax!

at 10:15 PM | 0 comments