Day Off

If you are following my Instagram, you know very well that I have been enjoying bike riding, park-visiting, and coffee-drinking around and about Davis today for César Chávez Day. Sì se puede!!

I'm now making brown rice with a packaged Indian seasoning thing and randomly getting Chris Otter Pops from the freezer just because I love him.

Yes folks. It's a good day.

Leo is Happy

Music Reviews, March 24

CHECK'S IN THE MAIL!!

Can you tell I'm happy my car's paid off this month? Four years and ten months later.

Battlestar Karaokia

My friends Lindsay and Mo have started an epic battle with me and Chris. The whole thing can be seen on my YouTube Channel playlist, "Battlestar Karaokia."

Here's my channel: THIS

Linguisty

I realized I don't write a lot on here about linguistics or what it's like to live with a PhD student in Linguistics. So I'm thinking of changing the name of the blog. Unfortunately, the URL can't change and it's the same as the current name. Would that be confusing to anyone? Please leave your comments below or on facebook.

Videos Are Up

The playlist is up, folks, and here it is! Enjoy, and please don't forget to comment and rate.

YouTube

Check out the new YouTubes I've been putting up of the Sincerely, Me show at It's a Grind Coffee House in Roseville.

Vlog 3/19/2011

whistle concert

Deaf Event

Video Blog!!!

I'm really glad my phone uploads straight to YouTube before I can convince myself to watch it, or I'd never post anything. Anyway, here's five minutes of what I later found out was just me babbling.

Dreams

I had a dream last night. The logic of dreams is never very-well...logical, so bare with me. I was with my family and Chris. I had been living with Chris for awhile and he was my fiancé, just like IRL, right? So I'm sitting there and I realized I hadn't talked to my boyfriend, who was also Chris, in a long time. The image of each was the same, but I didn't realize they were the same person...yet. I thought about how happy I was with Chris (fiancé) that I completely neglected to even ask Chris how he was doing. So I picked up my iPhone (yes, even in my dreams I have an iPhone) and I was going to text him, when I suddenly realized that both Chris's were the same person.

Talk about DEEP! Here I am in this relationship. Chris and I were together for four years before he proposed and we moved in with each other. The relationship has morphed and changed over the years and now there's a new dynamic. I'm reconciling those different aspects of the relationship and realizing that though we change and our circumstances change, it's still us, it's still him, it's still real. I'm so madly in love. I'm going to go eat the corned beef and cabbage my wonderful fiancé made for us tonight. Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!!

Bubble Nest and Bright Colors.

My betta finally made a bubble nest this week and he's displaying his colors very brightly! He isn't eating his pellets, so to avoid making his water murky, I'm feeding him bloodworms every other day. I'm not going to perform a full bowl cleaning this week, but just change out his water 25% at a time because I want him to stay comfortable with his bubble nest. I'm super happy! It means he likes us!!!

Bob Ross

We watch "The Joy of Painting" at night before bed. I know you're all jealous.

4square

Foursquare blog has informed me of new ways for them to make money off of people checking in, but no real way to make the game more interesting to me. Check-ins now aggregate your and your friends' information to recommend venues that you might like based on your previous check-ins. Fine. Whatever. I don't care. I have Google Places.

They've revamped their leaderboard. Now you can earn points for things like checking in with a friend you haven't checked in with in awhile, going to a kind of restaurant you've never checked into, or checking into a city you haven't been to in a number of days. Seriously? I have three friends on foursquare and I never check in with them. We happen to live in different cities. No one else I know is on foursquare, whether it be facebook friends or IRL friends. That's at least 150 people altogether. (I know, big deal, right? But still...)

The theory behind these two additions is that it will motivate people to check in more often and visit new places. But they've got it all backwards. They are still neglecting universal badges, constantly expanding their list of badges that only work in certain cities or that are only available if you follow some really lame-ass profiles (Big Boi, anyone? Pennsylvania just to get a Groundhog Day badge? Gimme a break).

Maybe I'm jumping off the boat too early, but foursquare just isn't offering anything in the way of gameplay anymore. It's all about the "social network" aspect of it, which is where they are going to make their money. However, I don't see how this can have much sticking power among users, no matter that they grew 3,000% in a year. Shooting stars die out fast.

Still bored! That is all.

Casserolé

I made myself a Youtube video. I've never uploaded one before. It's cute, go watch it: http://youtu.be/y8sJRzuB6rs

Chris is learning my favorite Led Zeppelin song on guitar right now, Over the Hills and Far Away, and is finding it much more difficult than he anticipated. Thanks a lot, Jimmy Page.

I'm making Casserolé tonight, which is the Enchilada Casserole recipe Chris's mom gave me. It's his all-time favorite meal and there have been times since we moved to Davis where I've made it for him twice in one week. It's that awesome.

It's not been the greatest week for me at work. Stress. That's all I am allowed to say about my day. By law.

ASL is super fun. I think the best thing about learning foreign languages is that it's a brand-new way to express myself. I was thinking about staying home last night because I had such a crappy day at work, but once I got there, I had a blast and I'm really glad I went. I made a video on me telling "The Lumberjack Story," but Chris has to convert it before I can post it onto Youtube to show everyone. I did it with the camcorder instead of my iPhone.

The sweet smell of tomatoes, chicken and enchilada sauce beckons me, so I must wrap it up soon. I cleaned Leo's tank and put in the rocks and plants that I bought for him. He still refuses to eat pellets so I'm feeding him bloodworms for now. He won't survive on just that forever, so I'm going to have to figure something out. I will keep you all posted.  Dinner time!

Leonard Marvin Graham

Tyler and Andrea came down to Davis yesterday so Chris and Ty could practice for the upcoming Sincerely, Me acoustic show. Andrea and I usually hang out downtown or peruse Petco for squees and cuteness. I noticed that there were some fine looking betta fish at Petco. The male crown tale struck my eye and it was only $7.99, but much more interesting than even the majestic half-moon double-tail for $14.99.  On a whim, I texted Chris.
"You want a betta fish?"
He answered, "Not really."
I texted back "ok," and moved on to the reptiles. About a minute later I received another message from him: "If u wanna take care of it."

That sounded like a big fat YES to me, so I grabbed a tank, food, water drops, and the crown tail and headed to the register. On the way home, I decided he looked more like a Leo than a Marvin, the latter being my first choice in name, so I named him Leonard Marvin Graham. Andrea wrote his name on his tank for him. We call him Leo for short. He spent an hour poking around at the dry-erase marker on his tank. He's super smart, and he flares up very quickly in front of a mirror. He's no wimp.

He's only eaten one pellet so far. I fed him last night and tried again this morning. No luck. He spits them out which leads me to believe they are too hard for him, so I might go get him some blood worms and see how he reacts to those. Of course, if he's not hungry, he's not hungry. I am, though, and I'm going to have breakfast now.