I may have just chipped a tooth on a pistachio shell, but otherwise life is good

Hi, all.

Sometimes life is stressful, and don’t tell me otherwise or I’ll start rattling off my never-ending to do list.  But I’m in a good mood today.  Little things put me in a good mood.  Little things probably also put me in a bad mood, but I’ll tell you that for sure when I’m in a bad mood.

But before I start in on that, I want to specially single out one Derek Satterfield because this Leap Day Voucher made me think of him/you (depending on if you are Derek or not).  It probably made me think of him because of the excessive use of footnotes, mention of 13th century Scottish laws, and the phrase “pleasantly whelmed” (as opposed to overwhelmed or underwhelmed).

Okay, so I wrote those paragraphs earlier today when I had enough energy to really feel deep-to-the-core happy.  I still feel pretty happy, but ready-for-bed happy.  At least I have a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and Goldfish to keep me awake and alert throughout this blog post.

Nicole, did you see in your blog comments that we are in the same debate league/division/whatever term?  That’s exciting!  If you’re still in debate next year, you’ll probably go to AU’s tournament, because apparently a lot of schools do.  Then we could see each other (=

Devin (Sagittarius) at a horoscope fountain we saw.

Me at said fountain, but you can't really see my sign.  Pisces.

Okay, so I’m going to get around to why I’m happy today, promise, but I also get to talk about when Devin was here, since last week he was here and sick and I couldn’t write a good post (or, as Jason diplomatically put it, I opted for a “light and refreshing post”.  Thank you.).  It was a really fun week, even though especially toward the end he was really sick.  Some of the highlights of the week:

• Spending hours in the studio because I had four paintings due the Monday after he got here (the 20^th).  He was really good, and all his Gunnin experience came in handy.  The art class after the paintings were due, everyone had to critique other people’s from the class and the prof asked his opinion and he made really astute comments.
• Going out to eat a lot and celebrating our anniversary (=
• Taking him to my Spanish class and him (playfully) making fun of my Spanish teacher’s accent (she’s from Spain and talks really fast so he had trouble understanding her; male defense mechanism much? Jk.)
• Wednesday going into the city and spending forever at the National Art Gallery and still not getting through one of the two buildings.  He is a big art history guru; I just called to ask him about his art history preferences so I could share them with the other Gunnin-ites, and he says he likes the Baroque period (we talk about Pieter Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs a lot) and that his favorite Renaissance painters are Titian and Mantegna (he had to look through the art history book to be sure).  Comments/ reactions/ counters from said Gunninites?  I’m curious about your guys’s art preferences.
• Education for International Development class was the first class besides art where he was fully engaged and really interested in what we were learning, so that was really great to see.  Shocking that the boring Econ lecture earlier the same day didn’t make an equal mark on him.
• Watching like 8 hours of Modern Family.  Ohmylord did we watch a lot.
• Even though he was sick for a good part of it, going to the bed and breakfast in Hyattsville, MD was really fun.  We went on a couple walks, watched Modern Family, slept without a roommate, and really enjoyed her beautiful house.  If you guys ever visit D.C., this house is amazing, and as I alluded to last week, it’s 50 dollars per night for 1 person to stay there and 50 dollars a night for 16 people to stay there.  Total.  So totally a great bargain and her house was fully stocked with food, drinks, soaps, towels, laundry facilities, maps, metro passes…. It was amazing.  We found her on this website called Airbnb where any Joe can list room(s) in their house for people to crash in.

Post Office Pavilion stree-level and the house we stayed at.  The front makes it look small, but it's four bedrooms plus library, living room, family room, two bathrooms, and a basement.  When you guys all visit me this will be our home.

Now I’m all by myself, but I’m going home for spring break in 6 days.

Onto my good last 48 hours or so!  My friend Eleanor and I decided we wanted to live together, but we had pretty opposite housing preferences (I wanted a triple on the south side of campus, she wanted a double on the north side of campus) (rather, I wanted a double, but didn’t want to pay extra money).  She is pretty assertive, and I am too, but since we had bad lottery numbers and the south side dorm I want is really small (that’s why I like it- sense of community, and it’s themed housing, either Substance Free or Social Justice [do either of those sound like things I might like?]), we figured we would just go for the north side dorm and be in a double, since being in a triple is really cramped and they would probably be out of them because there aren’t many available.

Well, we got there and there were still two or three rooms left in each of the Social Justice and Substance Free halls.  And I brought this up to her, but she was like “but we agreed to live in Leonard so that’s what we’re doing” (north side) and then changed the subject.  So I kind of felt like I’d compromised everything I wanted (triple, south side, community) for what she wanted, and that’d I’d be paying extra money to live in a double somewhere I didn’t want to live.  And there was a moment where I had to decide if I was going to stand up for myself and bring the issue up.  And I decided to do that, because I knew I’d regret it otherwise.  So I did and my hands were shaking (I’m assertive but usually nonconfrontational with friends) but in the end we decided to see what was available in each and make our decision off that.

My view, only it'll be 15 feet higher than this.

So we are in Roper, my dorm choice, for next year, in the Social Justice Living Learning Community, and this sentence is wrought with commas.  Her hall was going to have construction “from early morning to late afternoon” right next door, and we were going to have to live on the 8^th floor to get a good view.  So I’m really glad she was willing to compromise and that I brought it up, because I know I would’ve resented a construction-filled, expensive housing situation without the added community of being awesome and Social Justice-y.

Strike One for a happy Rachael: I am not homeless.

Hurtled into famy (opposite of infamy)

This morning I found out my “Single Mothers” poem, which most or all of you have read, was chosen for an art show.  As in I was featured in a Women’s Initiative art-for-women-about-women-by-women or any of those options show.  And I’m very proud of that.  They emailed me today and the art show was this evening.  I emailed the poem to them three weeks ago and when they never got back I figured they weren’t showing it, but a girl named Carmen emailed me today and said they loved it, they just hadn’t been sure if they were featuring poetry but found a space they could do so.  So they used it and it’s hanging in the Dav, which if you guys follow my blogs know is my favorite spot on campus in my favorite building on campus.  The place where I get my good hot chocolate, if that rings any bells.

Strike Two for a happy Rachael: I am now a famous poet.

Lastly (sorry this has been a long post), my art project is going well.  I’ll just show you pics and be done with that.  Left: photo of still life.  Right: Sketch. Bottom center: My work-in-progress painting.

  

Strike Three for a happy Rachael: I am an artist who can draw shadows on a still life.  Strike three means we’re outta time for today.

Night night.

-Rachael

P.S.  In a Derek-esqe question, does anyone notice what changes I made to our blog template?  I made two changes and one is much more obvious than the other.  For the technologically illiterate and to make the game easier, I will specify that I made a change to something about the title of my post.  Good luck, players.