i've always thought laundromats were interesting places, although i am super happy to finally have a washer and dryer INSIDE MY HOUSE after years of lugging laundry to the laundromat.
the ewwww is because paco was sitting on the couch cuddling with our dogs minha and katta, and just got up to do something in another room. two seconds after he got up, minha, who must have a delicate stomach or something and is prone to throwing up (who ever heard of a dog with a a delicate stomach?), just, like, projectile vomited a stream of watery dog barf right onto the spot where paco had been sitting.
don't worry, karla or jen or dan or sean or whoever might possibly be reading this who knows me and might visit us here eventually and sit on that same couch cushion, paco cleaned it up REALLY GOOD. (side note: jen or dan, are you reading this?? i'm dying to know. someone from denver shows up pretty frequently in my stats, and you're the only people i know from there.)
the notes from our lives is that, bad grammar aside, we had our second wedding anniversary yesterday! woo hoo. it has been a rough year--financially, emotionally, health-ily, but it will be better this year, aw yeah. for paco's present, i made him this little booklet sort of thing with a nice letter attached with some mushy lovey things, plus a list detailing all the ways this year was going to be better. the booklet was the "documentation," including a printout from ING direct confirming the opening of a new savings account to be used as a vacation savings fund for us (i could only put a teeny tiny smidge of cash, but it's a start) for a trip he wants to take. i also included my grad school transcript, since i'm almost done and that will be such a big stress over and done with.
i know it doesn't sound very romantic, but it was.
and for me, paco has made this sort of tradition of cooking a quasi-fancy candlelight dinner. it sounds sort of cheesy, but it was really nice. he made this insane assortment of asian seafood dishes, including scallops with basil, stir-fried vegetables with fish sauce, shrimp fried rice, and broiled mahi-mahi (i don't know how asian that last one was, but it was good).
it's getting cooler here in miami, so we can open the windows and turn off the air conditioning. this is a good sign that things are heading towards better.
it reminds me of living in a small town with not much going on, or a place you don't like very much, and keeping your eyes open for pretty things peeking out here and there among all the trash and dust. because they do peek out.
is sort of what i am doing right now. i recently got around to setting up my bloglines account, so i could read my blogs of choice more quickly (HA HA HA), and now, of course, i have been reading more blogs than usual, so...it really hasn't been saving so much time. well, maybe a little. anyway, i found this funny essay via theory of the daily.
i know my posts haven't been so thrilling lately (are they ever?)--mostly just links and stuff--but i'm still drudging through all my (hopefully) final school work and haven't been all that inspired to write about much.
so read this essay about what i do best. whoever you are, who might be reading this. also, i finally discovered the < blockquote > tag. what took me so long?
I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.
Make sure to mark this date on your calendar: Dec. 3. That is the day when a really pioneering exhibition, "Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits," opens at El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan.
"Retratos" will comprise approximately 115 paintings and sculptures that offer an overview of portraiture, an art form with a long and established tradition in Latin America. And though it is the retratos that are being featured, the exhibit also offers a fascinating insight into the culture and habits of the times when they were created.
"For centuries, Latin-American artists have attempted to represent people that existed in a recognizable way," said Fatima Bercht, a Brazilian art historian and chief curator at El Museo del Barrio.
i added one of those little icon thingies (a favicon) (i have no idea how to pronounce that, btw) that shows up in the address bar! it's actually very easy. why, you can do it too!
you can't tell what my icon is really supposed to be, but it's from a photo of my green tea kettle that jen gave me several years ago, whistling and blowing steam through the little black bird whistle thingy that fits into the spout.
i've been alright, if a little muddled, busy, distracted. hope y'all reading this, whoever's out there, are fine, too.
i've been really busy lately with work, and some unusual travel. not that the travel itself is unusual, just that i hadn't travelled this much in quite awhile--atlanta for a ROOTS board meeting the week before last, and NYC for E. and N.'s beautiful wedding last week. i'm so happy for them!
and next week i'm going to pittsburgh! about a year ago i signed up to be on this alumni admissions advisory committee thing for helping recruit and advise minority students for my alma mater. nothing happened for, like i said, over a year, and then BOOM! they're flying me up to pittsburgh to give a 3-minute speech to high school students visiting campus for a celebration of diversity weekend!
are "celebration of diversity" weekends kind of bogus and token-y? YES! but i'm happy to encourage kids who are considering the school; and i'm anxious to go back to pittsburgh, where i haven't been since i graduated--even if it's only for about 36 hours; and i get to stay in a hotel for free. and i love hotels, for some reason.
that's it for now. this weekend i will be holed up trying to finish work on my two incomplete classes so i had get my damn masters degree this december, already.
i know this is lame, but i'm posting just to resurrect my blog from near-death. i've been busy and not in a blogging frame of mind lately. right now i'm up late finishing some stuff for school and some other things. i'm hungry in that middle-of-the-night kind of way. it's too quiet. i need to put the TV on and watch me some bad middle-of-the-night talk shows to keep me company.
![[ Registered ]](http://www.diarist.net/registry/button.gif){kind=small}
