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| Sometimes I pretend that I don't want to receive cut flowers, but this is a lie. I always want flowers. Lots and lots of beautiful flowers, provided that they are not red roses (or white roses, I'm not fond of them either).
Whenever I am at Trader Joe's, I get one of their cheapest bouquets of flowers (usually $5 or less). I'm really not one to make new years' resolutions (as I have said before), but I have decided recently that I want fresh cut flowers in my apartment at all times. It's a psychological thing: when there are flowers in a vase on my table, I don't want clutter on the table. Once I've cleaned the table, I want the entire surrounding area to be tidy as well. I find that when I bring home flowers, I am suddenly inspired to clean the entire apartment and make it as welcoming to match the bouquet on my dining room table. Interesting, eh? I think this will be a Sunday ritual from now on.
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| Holiday luncheon at work this week, so I am throwing all my baking energy into this evening. I miss baking on a regular basis, but honestly it makes no sense to do it when the only one who will end up eating it is me (and I don't really eat sweets anymore).
Saw "Synecdoche" last week and left puzzled and disappointed. Maybe a second watching would have me change my mind, but all I got out of it was pretentious drivel... I do think I'm going to watch Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine again, just to remind myself that I do still enjoy Kaufman very much. He really does need to get his old directors back collaborating with him, though.
I did the math today, it's been 8 1/2 months, no wonder I'm suffering such extreme withdrawal. And angst, etc etc. But seriously, 8 1/2 months. Ugh. I do this calculation once every few weeks, and each time it depresses me more.
Ah, well. Life does have its upsides. For example: I bought some vanilla softlips yesterday and it is the tastiest, most lovely lipbalm ever. I do so love the smell of vanilla. And this cranberry apple butter stuff I bought at Trader Joe's... amazing. Plus I handed in my take-home final yesterday afternoon, thereby freeing me from classes until January. Only research to do these days, that is a lovely feeling. What do I do with all my extra time? Knit socks, probably.
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| I just baked some banana nut bread, and instead of using my normal recipe I tried out one from my Joy of Cooking cookbook. It said to put in dried apricots, so I grudgingly did, and now it tastes terrible. What will I do with this loaf of ruined banana bread? Survey says: take it to lab group meeting tomorrow and not admit that I was the one who brought it.
My birthday was earlier this week, and it went well. I think I'm getting to the age where holidays and birthdays aren't a big deal anymore, although some friends of mine did try to throw me a surprise party. Unfortunately, they sent out the email invite to a listserv which I am a member of, meaning that it wasn't so much a surprise... however I did get to use my acting skills by pretending for almost a whole week to not know what was going on.
Oddly, other than the presents from Courtney and Mike, all my gifts were either movies or money/gift certificates. Can't complain, but I did find it worth noting. I have a whole bunch of movies to watch that I haven't gotten around to yet, mainly because Gabe has been buying me a lot of foreign/classic films. This is a sneaky little technique called "buy laurel a gift that I secretly want so that I can have it later." Quite clever, and we do have nearly identical tastes in movies so I won't begrudge him for it. In return I expect to get to watch his entire collection.
Actually, I also got some chocolate and wine as presents. I'm currently drinking some of the wine, which ought to explain why my writing abilities are not quite up to par at the moment. I do find it puzzling when I see bottles of wine which are not designated as "merlot" or "cabernet sauvignon" but rather simply "red wine." This seems to happen mostly with American reds, I suppose because americans generally have muddled pedigrees and so why shouldn't their wines. This particular bottle is made up of petite syrah, syrah, petite verdot, carignone, mourvedre, barbera, zinfendel, tannet, sangiovete, malbec, and grenache. I can't pronounce some of those grape names (and have probably mispelled them to boot), nor do I have anything witty to say about the wine itself other than that I can taste blackberry and raspberry in it. My palete is not very refined, and I am too broke to become a good wine taster.
I have a homework assignment due on Tuesday and I have done exactly 25% of it. I should probably do some more except that my brain is still fuzzy. Also I am annoyed because I was at Starbucks yesterday and think I left one of my knitted socks there... half of a pair I was going to give as a gift to a dear male friend of mine. I called up Starbucks this afternoon to see if they had found it, and the guy working there seemed confused that I had lost a sock. He told me that I should try to keep the pairs together. I don't think he understood that the mate of the missing sock is still on my knitting needles (just past the heel!), he probably thought that I took off some socks I was wearing and lost one of them. Not a lot of knitters at that particular Starbucks, I guess. Anyway, I'm seriously annoyed because it takes over a week to make each sock, and I'm not sure if I have enough yarn to do another one. Hmmph.
On the plus side, I'm going to try making sushi this week. I have all the ingredients for a California roll (well, I think I have some crab, I need to check the pantry), so probably that will be a part of my thanksgiving meal. Oh, the joys of living by oneself.
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| First frost has been forecast for tonight, so I very carefully took a pair of scissors to my tomato vines and harvested bunches of green cherry tomatoes which are now sitting in a paper sack with a very ripe banana. If this isn't successful, I think it may be time for some fried green tomatoes. Either way, yum!
Now I am trying to convince myself that I am not allowed to eat the bowl of Halloween candy that I have set aside for trick-or-treaters tomorrow evening. I knew that opening the bags today was a bad idea.
In other news, today I got to play with mice in the lab. By which I mean, we tested out our new micro-ct system on some of its intended patients, two little white lab mice. It was all fun and games until they had to be "sacrificed" at the end of the day. I can tell it is going to take some time before I feel comfortable killing mice by cervical dislocation; fortunately I wasn't the one in charge of it this afternoon. I am looking forward to when we actual start imaging some mice who are needed for a liver study, since the owners of these mice need them back alive. I don't think I have ever killed an animal that wasn't an insect, at least directly, but I have no right to be squeamish since I have benefited from the death of hundreds of chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, etc in my lifetime.
At least when the mice died, there wasn't any blood or anything. Just a nasty popping sound. It was quick and they didn't suffer (the second of the two was still unconscious from the isoflurane), but all the same I would have much preferred that their cute little mousey lives had not ended today.
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