Christmas 2007

(We used to be photogenic people. . . )

I hope your holidays were joyful, faithful blog-readers (whomever you are!). Brett's family went to California for Christmas, so he spent Christmas Eve (making homemade pizzas for dinner) and morning with us, which is pretty exciting seeing as how he's the ONLY guest at the Johnson household for Christmas morning (with the exception of my maternal grandparents who visited before Austin was even born). Here's a photo blog post to explain the rest:

All dressed up for the 'casual' Christmas party for Brett's work. Remind me to rave about the chocolate fountain at the party. . .

Leftover snow = White Christmas in Boise! Just ask this garden turtle statue (to know this is to know my mother) how he feels about all the snow!

As previously mentioned, we made home-made pizzas for Christmas Eve dinner. Here's the family creating their scrumptious concoctions-- apparently, Riley thinks pizza is yummy (pictured above begging for pizza tidbits under the table).

I bought a Wii last July with my summer job money. My brother has every other game console besides the Wii, so my purchase rounds out the technological goldmine in our house; it also came in handy to entertain our Christmas Eve all-nighter. (However, Brett and I proved what an old couple we are by falling asleep around two a.m.) The above picture shows Brett playing Call of Duty-- or trying to, anyway-- with my brother in the role of backseat-gamer.

And then Christmas morning came!

My mom made a great Christmas brunch-- breakfast casserole (egg, sausage, cheese, mushrooms, and other breakfasty/omelette items), fruit salad, coffee cake (from Brett's mom), bacon, and OJ. Gift-opening was quite an ordeal as well, at least in my family, because one person at a time opens their stocking, then gifts, and the non-openers look on in great anticipation for the perfect reaction on the recipient's face. . . quite a suspenseful and slow-going process!!! Judging from the gifts from my family, one would conclude that I am a narcissistic video-gamer (somewhat accurate), based on the Wii supplies, brown boots, desk items, candy, pasta recipe book, misc clothes, and other items they gave me. Brett gave me a new black iPod nano that holds 8 GB's worth of videos, pictures, and--of course-- music. I'm still in the process of loading my CD's onto it. Very cool! Now I can join the rest of society and tune out everything except pure musical satisfaction pulsing through the microscopic magnetic holes in my earphones.

All in all, 'twas a great Christmas.

Farewell, ANTM... for now.

My week consists mainly of school, teaching, and watching ANTM on Wednesday nights. Well, last Wednesday was the season finale of ANTM Cycle 9. Congrats to Saleisha, the winner:

although I have to express my extreme disappointment (to the point of tears) that my girl Jenah didn't win.

I feel like my week will be devoid of skinny-girl drama and the oh-so-fierce Tyra Banks. But, here's the great news: the new cycle starts on February 20!!! YES!

my index finger is killing me...

from incessantly moving around on my mouse/square-thingy while trying to condense my syllabus into four pages (i'm trying in vain to work on my verbose policies. . . that i'm pretty sure no one reads anyway).

currently, i am seeking an elixir to quaff that will result in a short-term death lasting until the third stroke of midnight on thursday, december 20 in a very "romeo and juliet"-ish fashion. payment to be made in the form of my scrumptious tomato soup courtesy of campbell's. or oriental top ramen. you choose. merci beaucoup.

ah, the end of the semester (i call it "cheating death").

You would think by now that I would have planned for the end of the semester cram, late-night paper writing (oh, don't EVEN bring up my pseudo-prospectus disaster!), and preparing for graduate-level presentations the week before dead week. But no. Here I sit in the nice new building at BSU, the Interactive Learning Center, in a room that I reserved for student conferences (you know, to seem more teacherly and to seem like I have connections in high places that hook me up with a sweet breakout room. . .), and weirdly stroking the shiny, silky, fragrant-- in a bookish sort of way-- cover of the new LCRE Moby-Dick.

I thought I'd share the most brilliant opening of a book. Ever. Even though I complain about my coursework, I am still tragically in love with Herman Melville's writing. I also thought I'd share the REAL first line of Moby-Dick (none of that "Call me Ishmael" pishposh):

"Etymology"
(Supplied by a late consumptive Usher to a grammar school.)

The pale Usher-- threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer hankerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

Ah. Dearest Usher: I, too, know mortality. . . especially when my laptop loses a wireless internet connection repeatedly and my cell phone battery dies after less than the stated battery life on the box. Ah, being threadbare.

EMA Fall Banquet

Last night was the EMA Fall Banquet presented by (the spirit of) Lewis Carroll. It was an excuse to dress up (I wore a pretty hot black strapless dress with a black satin sweater wrap and my painful but fierce black stilletos with the sparkly jewel on the ankle strap), hang out with fellow English-interested people and profs, and laugh so hard my face hurt.

Sometimes I'm not sure I fit in with English majors-- am I well-read enough? am I convincing and assertive enough to survive in this field? is writing a narcissistic and self-fulfilling task?-- but I still love them. . . in all their nerdy-laugh, alcohol-induced, and bibliophile greatness.

When will we be done changing?

At this point in time, on a Tuesday morning in November, I am a very random, vacillating individual. So, in order to share a little bit more about myself, here are 10 truths about Andrea that you are just dying to know:

1. I buy used books that I may or may not read someday. For instance, I have 2 copies of Homer's "The Odyssey," four volumes of "The Best American Short Stories," and a set of Ernest Hemingway's complete writings (hardback, spotless dust jackets, and all short stories (either finished or not), and novels). Maybe someday I'll crack the spine and read all of Hemingway's short stories. If not, my posterity is bound to inherit bookshelves full of literature-- all with my name written in pencil on the first blank recto.

2. Tyra Banks is my annoying hero. Not only has she conquered the runway, posed in gowns (that are worth more than my car) for magazines (whose fan bases are larger than the population of my state), canoodled with "noted fashion photographers" and "runway divas extraordinaire," but she has managed to take over daytime television AND host my favorite show, "America's Next Top Model." As well, she is the running joke of "The Soup" and YouTube. Take for instance, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOR4qekHWlA Now, if only I could walk into my 101 class and say, "Now today, I would like to give you the gift of. . . tools to write POETRY! Poetry poetry poetry!" and all my students would jump up screaming, "I've got tools to write poetry!" and then I could run around the classroom, fall on the floor, and point to everyone saying, "And you have tools! And you! And you! And you!"

3. I am on my way to weighing 600 pounds, and my evidence is my newfound favorite foods, which include: Idaho Pizza Company breadsticks, Sonic mozzarella sticks, fries, oriental flavored Top Ramen noodles, sour gummi worms, and Toblerone chocolate in all its triangular glory.

4. When I was 14, my parents gave me $10 to kiss a banana slug. There you go.

5. Mostly, I think graduating from college is overrated. I forget half of the time that I even have a diploma. The pictures are cute though:


6. I can't stand touching raw meat. I think my (future) husband and children will just have to like mushroom burgers, black beans, and other meat-ish fakeouts. That, or we'll eat at Applebee's all the time.

7. In high school and my first year of college, I worked at Hollywood Video. Not only did I take my job very seriously, but I also rented over 300 movies in a span of less than 2 years. The sad part is that I probably watched 299 of them. To this day, walking into a video store gives me wobbly knees and activates my gagging reflex. Go, Netflicks!

8. I drive a Korean-made car that is purple.

9. Sometimes, I fear that I am way too weird for any guy to stand being around me for more than a day. And sometimes, I am reminded that that quality is exactly what I love most about Brett:


10. In conclusion, the last fact that I'd like to leave you with is simply this: Andrea + blogging = manifestation of all the randomness, complete with colors and pictures and oddly (read: "awk") phrased sentences. Enjoy!

Elliot's Surgery

A few weeks ago, Elliot suddenly became aware of the season change: allergies kicked in, little squirrels and gophers in the yard, and a slow descent into darkness. . . rather literally.

Elliot's eyes get kinda yucky when his allergies kick in, so we didn't really think too much about his sudden sensitiveness to being touched around his eyes. He has eye drops and medication (hmm... just like his human friends!) to help with this chronic disease. However, when my mom was giving him a bath and was checking out his eyes, she noticed a rather large hole in his left eye. Yes, you read that correctly: a hole. Screaming, she tore down to the vet's office (really, we keep them in business) and Elliot was immediately rushed into surgery to save his eyeball! He punctured the top two layers of his eye and pierced his cornea on something very sharp and very painful.

Luckily, our vet is amazing and was able to save Elliot from being a one-eyed dog! The vet was able to take skin from his under Elliot's eyelid and graft over the puncture wound, but the little doggie probably won't be able to see out of most of his left eye. Home-care has been pretty intense with pain and anti-inflammatory medication and three different kinds of eye drops. He also wears a head cone-- and if you have a dog, you know how funny and sad this can be for an animal-- and can't jump, descend stairs, or do anything fun.

The pain medicine keeps him pretty much knocked out, but I still feel bad for him. Good thing he's a pretty tough little guy! At least I have some company while trying to finish my 598 Inquiry-based research project and while trying to read Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables" for Thursday.

Fall

I don't have office hours on Friday, so I grabbed a few books from my office and left campus around 12:40 after my 101 class. There was only one problem: the EMA Moveable Feast (discussion of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover) was at 5 p at Linda Marie's house on 8th street downtown. To kill time, I decided to go by Walmart to buy deodorant and other toiletries; however, after I surveyed the parking lot-- strewn grocery carts, families of 10 children, and the like-- I passed Walmart and went into the Goodwill instead, where I scavenged the racks and found two amazingly cheap items: raspberry cotton blazer (from American Eagle!) and a BCBG khaki-colored skirt that falls past my knees (a big deal when standing in front of classroom of girls and boys). Hooray for cheap (dollar-wise) clothing!

But, the problem still remained: 3.5 hours until the Moveable Feast. So I called my loving boyfriend and discovered that he was on his way to Wendy's. Nothing says "I love you" like devouring deep-fried, crispy golden fries and diabetes-causing Mountain Dew together while the molecules in my body multiply, divide, and rearrange to generously cushion my derriere. A few weeks ago, I invented the "chicken nugget shot" for those of us germ-phobes that will not touch food after shopping for hours (esp. in a used clothing store): lick the sauce, tilt the nugget carton back, and "shoot" the nugget into your mouth. I'm a genius. But I ate my nuggets in relative normalness this time.

The hours until 5 pm closed in; I drove to Memorial Park (Brett had to go to work), parallel parked, and proceeded to read Janet Holmes's F2F for class on Monday. Just imagine: yellow leaves falling outside, the crisp autumn air seeping through the cracks in my doors, blue skies, and seventeen fat squirrels (yes, I counted seventeen!) frolicking around the park. . . as E careens through reflective ponds, attics, and hell. As I watched the corpulent squirrels (seriously, tuck and roll on the furry creatures!) dance and squeak and dig up random brown objects which they then jammed into their mouths, a flashback of Utah's Hogle Zoo prairie dogs entered my mind:


(Don't worry, little one, I know how you feel.)

The EMA Moveable Feast reminds me of how lucky (and perhaps stupid) I am to care enough about my dreams to forego "making bank"-- as one of my students puts it-- to sit around a table at Linda Marie's house, eat cranberry and apple muffins, and drink home-made grape juice while talking about an incredibly seedy and, frankly, disgusting novel. That's OK; I was in good company.

I hope you're well, doing something you love too.

subliminal advertising?

Basically, I need to get back to work, but I thought I'd share this, because I'm a crazy crazy dork: I am incessantly coughing and am trying to mentally stop this involuntary bodily function in time for my 101 class tomorrow (how awkward can it be when your teacher is turning red, sweating, and hacking up a lung while trying to suck on cough drops and drink water while still coughing. . .) when a Vicks commercial appeared magically on T.V. Little green upside-down pyramids dropped to earth and comforted little rosy-cheeked children tucked into bed. I can wish, can't I?

Hi! A First Post...

I'm really quite a boring person. Really. Not much happens worth writing about publically, so this blog will consist mainly of random rambings, scrabbled scrambles, and the like.

I like ferrets. http://www.emmettferret.org/