I love being lazy

I am so loving the doing nothing right now (including substantive blogging apparently). I know it won't happen again for quite some time, and even now there are a few things I need to do before school starts up again. Bit for today and probably tomorrow, this is bliss.

Clever Play

I'm still no great football fan, but I do appreciate clever. 

Found via socioimages, complete with fancy commentary.

Moving back towards normal

We unpacked today! Complete with laundry even. I'm far too proud of myself for accomplishing something so simple. Perhaps tomorrow we'll even make it to a grocery store. Although, personally I'm somewhat curious how long we could make it on the increasingly random and sad assortment of food in our fridge.

Home Again

Technically I've been home again since Saturday (why yes, I did spend Christmas on a plane), but I've just now begun to feel human again. Seriously, I feel like I've done nothing but sleep since I got back. And I'm still tired. Also, oddly jet-lagged. It feels so counter-intuitive to be trying to make myself stay up late, when I spend most of my life trying to get to force myself to get to bed at a decent hour. But this falling into bed exhausted at 9pm and waking up bright eyed at 5am just isn't working for me.

Weird sleep aside,it was still a fantastic trip. I think I'll be going back and doing some fast post-dated posts so I can pretend that I'm still keeping my blog every day for a year goal, and then maybe share a few stories if I can think of anything. But you know, tomorrow, because it's about 10pm now and I can barely keep my eyes open.

Dublin, Full Day 1

Still having fun. And now the internet knows my pre-hyphenated last name.

Made It! (And a special thankyou to Frankfurt Airport's magical hallway of requirment)

Well, it looks like we made it safe and sound to Dublin. It was actually a pretty decent flight (well, 3 to be exact - DC to Boston to Frankfurt to Dublin). And, considering I went through security a grand total of 5 times (once at each airport, because our transferring airports were laid out weird, and an extra 2 times at Reagan because we were early, lines were short, and I wanted to grab a sandwich from one of the food places in a different terminal. It was worth taking my shoes off twice.) without incident, scans or grops (well for me, Zach, who never took any extra sandwich trips, got both scanned and groped, because he's just lucky. Or because beards are scary.).

But the best part of the whole flight, was getting off the plane in Frankfurt at 5am, with a 5 hour layover ahead of us, and not having slept a wink on the flight over, and finding row after row after row of cots. I almost cried when I realized I might actually get to sleep. Real sleep, not awkward curled up in a horrible chair trying to ignore a never ending stream of useless announcements faux-sleep. Oh, there were minimal announcements too. Ir was all very magical.

Anyways, we're now in Dublin. I'm sure it will be great enough to bump unexpected cots off of being my favorite part of the trip, but I assure you it will be a tough competition.

Penguin Ornaments

A few days before we left, we finally set up our somewhat sad little fake tree with our strand of lights and 6 ornaments. We won't see it much this Christmas, but I know that I'll be really happy to walk in when this trip is over and see it all happy and Christmasey.

Especially my personal favorites of the ornaments, the penguins that I liberated from my Mom's tree one Christmas after learning that my baby 1st Christmas ornament was MIA.

(Why yes, this is a filler post. Expect more of them, because I'm in Europe, enjoying awesomeness, and didn't plan well enough to pre-write stuff but am too stubborn to let go of my blogging every day for a year goal)

Leaving for the airport in about 11 hours. Now, I just need to pack, clean the apartment and put the last touches on my mediocre paper. Time management is so not my specialty.

On the plus side, sleeping on the plane shouldn't pose a problem. 

Christmas Music

Growing up we only had one Christmas album, well actually a cassette tape that I'm surprised we didn't break as it was on nearly constantly for the month of December and the random week in July where every year I would decide I really missed Christmas.

And that's why even though I like quite a few different Christmas albums and songs, The Carpenters Christmas Portrait album will always be the only thing that really feels like Christmas to me.

For the life of me I don't know why my parents had the Carpenters and not something more traditional like Bing Crosby. They didn't listen to anything remotely like the Carpenters the rest of the year, they generally leaned more towards Queen and Genesis. Maybe it was because my Dad will always say that Karen Carpenter kind of sounds like my Mom, or maybe the tape was just on sale. For what ever reason, every December I spend some quality time with the Carpenters. 

Aloha, really, really wins.

Hey, remember my former High School's football team, who had always sucked when I went there, but was doing surprisingly well, so much that non-sports fan me actually cared? They just won the state Championship, 34-13, having never even been in the semi-finals before.

So, congratulations Aloha Warriors! I was over hear on the East Coast, obsessively checking the live play feed the whole time. Even with just little text updates, I was excited and anxious and all kinds of other sports fan feelings the whole time. Quite the new sensation. Maybe the reason I never cared about sports before is because all the teams I was supposed to care about sucked.

Also, the other team I kind of care about, the UofO Ducks are going the the BCS Championship. This is apparently a good football year for me. And whatdayaknow, I actually have genuine care and excitement. Yay rah!

You all are fantastic

You all are seriously amazing. I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that I can sit down, write about a problem, and the next day have all kinds of fantastic advice and encouragement from people I know, but haven't ever met. The internet is fantastic. You're fantastic. Thanks. Now, I'm going to go and actually use all that wonderful advice and figure out how to call my bank.

Travel Freak Out

I leave for my amazing Europe trip in 5 days. I'm totally freaking out. Excited, oh absolutely. But still freaking out. I've never done any travel remotely like this. Not only have I specifically never been to either Dublin or London, but I've pretty much never traveled. Never been to a foreign country. Never been on an overseas flight. So, as I try to make sure everything is ready and will go perfectly, I find myself freaking out a bit. I just feel like I'm going to forget something, or do something wrong and get everything going on the wrong foot. I like to prepare and plan and feel secure and in control. I like the known. This trip is fantastic, but not known. Hence the worry. (Oh, and all the TSA news stories are not helping. Reading a thread on people's worst travel stories may also have been counter-productive.)

Worry #1 - The Getting Ready
Finishing up my 30pg paper on time aside, what should I be packing for 10 days in Ireland and the UK in December? Warm clothes and layers, sure, but what about all the other little things that make traveling so much easier? Should I try to get some foreign currency before hand?

Worry #2 - The Getting There
How does international travel even work? I have my lovely passport, but do I have to do anything else special beyond just showing up?

What about surviving on the plane? How do you not go crazy on 10 hour flights? How do you sleep? How do you stay occupied? Books are great, but which one? Should I bring food?

Worry #3 - The Being There
This, I'm not so worried about. Once we're there, we're there and that fact alone will make everything fantastic, even if I do something stupid like forget to pack socks.  Still, any London/Dublin must sees or other general recommendations are always welcome. Mostly, I should just remember to focus on this part and stress a little less about being perfectly ready for it.

Not beautiful, just different

#reverb10 - December 8 – Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. 

What makes me different? Mostly, I'm just plain odd and a little over-imaginative and colorful. At least, that's what people keep telling me, while I sit there trying to figure out why exactly that was so weird. As in, we'll be playing a game of pictionary, where most people write things like Glee or penguins - and my contribution will be mermaid cannibals. Or I'll speak up in class, but with apparently a little more movement in my voice and arms than a more dignified law student, and a metaphor that is somehow just a little more colorful than ordinary. Or perhaps it was as simple as the fact that me stating that I think a certain professor is brilliant, but allowing him to interact with actual human beings seems like a gross violation of human rights, is just a tad more blunt than normal.

Honestly, most of this stuff just makes me feel self-conscious. I don't do things because I intentionally want to be odd, I just do things because that's what feels normal to me. Only to afterwords have people come up and tell me how funny or entertaining I was, meaning not normal. In a good way of course. I accept the compliment, I like the recognition, but I'm also usually inwardly trying to understand why what I did was so unusual.

These are the things people tell me they like about me. But they don't make me feel beautiful, mostly just flumoxed and a little self-conscious. I never know when I open my mouth if what I say will be taken like a normal, rational person statement, or if it will be met with an amused "Oh, that Genavee." Of course, sometimes it is all intentional, or at least it ends up that way when I start hamming it up when I'm getting a good reaction. But sometimes I really do wish I could just turn off the different, or at the very least always recognize it as such.

Sick Diet

What do you eat when your sick?

Right on schedule, I've developed my traditional achy cold and sore throat for finals. It's not pretty. The first night it really kicked in, I realized we were out of medicine, so I would lay there and try to sleep until it would hurt so bad that I'd have to get up and try some home remedy (gargling w/ salt water, honey, etc). Which would kind of work, but also wake me up again, leaving me to lay and get sleepy just in time for the pain to kick again. Fun stuff. With medicine, I can now sleep again. Unfortunately, my voice now sounds kind of like  Christian Bale's batman. While saying ordinary things is somewhat more fun, it's still probably not the best state of things so I'm trying to get rid of this as soon as possible. 

Generally when I'm sick I go for teh comfort food route, but partially because I'm not willing to take the time to cook, and partially because I want this gone now, I'm trying something else out. My theory is that if i load my body up with as much Vitamin C as humanly possible, at some point it will reach critical mass and explode, taking all traces of sickness with it. This kind of thinking is why I'm in law school, not medical. So far I'm living largely on pomegranate seeds, orange juice and vitamin c capsules. By my calculations, I'm consuming 2000% the daily recommended approach.

Surprisingly, I think it's actually kind of working. That or my body is just naturally healing, but the point is that batman voice aside, I feel pretty good. Today, I even decided I should probably add some protein in the mix, so I've added occasional nibbles of the crumbled bacon bits I usually put into salads. It's kind of like being on a Vitamin C version of Atkins. Anyways, I should probably go study or sleep or drink some more juice, so I think I'll just go do that instead of trying to find a neat way of concluding that. Here's hoping I'm not slowly killing myself with Vitamin C and goodnight.