"Very safe, as they're both dentists." -Hermione Granger, on her parents

I fell asleep before 11 p.m. tonight, which was nice. You might have noticed that I am no longer asleep. This is because my teeth hurt. Sort of.
You see, I have this sore spot on my right cheek-ly area, and then I have the occasional toothache on the left side of my mouth. The right side was hurting me before bed, and I fell asleep. But the LEFT side woke me up! Half an hour into a nice sleepy time, and I was awake. I went and got the ice pack, because I guess it was really my jaw that hurt more than anything else, and got tired of that. So I decided to go brush my teeth. I figured they would enjoy a nice toothbrush massage. Especially since my gums were kind of itchy.

I might be insane.

So I just spent almost twenty minutes brushing my teeth. Seriously. But now I am a little too awake to go back to bed, so I decided to stop by here and announce that I just brushed my teeth for a very long time. They feel nice and clean now, but my jaw is still kind of ache-y. Not nearly as bad, though.

I lead a very exciting life.

Though I am not sleepy enough to fall back asleep just yet, I am too sleepy to write about school today, so I will just say that it was basically the same as Thursday, except I had my Roaring Twenties/Great Depression class instead of the Liberalism and Conservatism one. And I get to stay in my IDC course (I got the department head's approval) and am just waiting to hear about my financial aid. And that is the end of that. I am going to lie in bed and listen to the Golden Girls and try to sleep now. Wish me luck!

My school smells like sewage. No, really.

I am at school. It's lame.
I guess being here is better than being at home pondering what I would do about health insurance.

I have three classes today. The first was at 9:25 this morning. It's my senior seminar, which is going to consist of sitting around discussing controversial topics. We have to write two papers. And at the end of the semester, for our final, we write another paper. We will come in to the classroom, he will give us a topic, and we will write for a while. That's it. We have a schedule of the topics we will be discussing, and a student will have to lead the discussion for each topic. I got to choose second, out of 18. Guess which topic I chose? Bingo! Abortion. I'm looking forward to the debate, even though it's in November.

That class ended at 10:40. My next class isn't until 1:40- a three hour break! Ugh. I've already nearly run out of things to do and I have another hour and a half before I will even start walking to my class (which is just downstairs from where I am now. And where I am now is down the hall from my first class.) That class will be my theology elective, "Christian Marriage". It should be interesting, since I am a Christian and I will be getting married soon. There aren't a ton of married students here, and most of them aren't Christian. I mean, there are more Catholic students than one would probably expect, since this is a traditionally Catholic school, but for the most part, students I've overheard, or who have voiced their opinions in class, are pretty indifferent about the subject of religion. Many are downright hostile. This is one of the reasons I hate school. I wonder how many people will be in this class, since it's upper level and it's a theology course.

That class ends at 2:55. I hope we get out early. I am going to go home for a little bit, because it's another three hours until my last class of the day, which starts at 6 p.m. That's only on Thursday nights, and it's a 400-level political science course, "Liberalism vs. Conservatism". Except for the fact that it's school, and it's at night, I'm looking forward to it. It's taught by my advisor, who is really awesome and funny. He occasionally brings us candy, and the only exams we have are papers. Last semester our three exams were portions of our final paper, and for the final we put them all together and gave brief presentations to the class. We brought food- we set up a taco bar and some people (myself included) brought desserts. The professor's contribution was several bags of oddly-flavored Doritos (like "midnight snack taco something-or-other") and some candy. He sometimes splits the class up into groups and we have "discussions" which are often highly amusing. This helps, since the class is two and a half hours long.

My only other class is a Tuesday night course (6:00-8:30), "The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression", with another one of my favorite professors. While he doesn't bring us food, we do listen to music and watch movies and stuff. He also raps and makes up parody songs. My favorite is set to the tune of "Mellow Yellow", and is about the War Amendments. Last semester I took a class with him entitled "Race Relations and Civil Rights", and we listened to a few Public Enemy songs. And in a Latin American history course I took with him, we watched a few episodes of the Travel Channel's "No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain" (who is awesome) that took place in Latin America. I like reading literature set in the Roaring Twenties (the Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books) AND the Great Depression, so I think that class will be interesting as well.

I guess coming back here isn't so bad after all. Sure, if I stay the whole semester it'll put me another $8000 in debt. Sure I'll have a lot of work to do, and sure the parking lot is too crowded. Sure there are way too many stupid freshmen wandering around, and yeah, the cafe area is insanely busy now they decided to have real food like Pizza Hut and Einstein Bros. Bagels. But it's better than going to a new school. I know all but one of my professors. The topics of my classes will be interesting, and I only have to go to school two days a week (all my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays.) So I guess I can cope. Probably. Eventually I need to buy my school books, though. Still don't have those yet...I'm trying to wait just a little bit to find out if my aid appeal gets approved. No point in having the books if I'm not going to be able to stay, right? Right.

There really was no point to this post. I just needed something to do. I've run out of things to do on facebook, I read all the interesting articles on the news website I frequently check, and...I'm bored. And it's another hour and twenty five minutes until my next class. I'm ready for a nap.

140 ish days until Disney!

We booked our honeymoon today!
We reserved our flight and paid a deposit on our Disney trip. We will be staying in the Pop Century resort, which is one of the newest ones. It just opened six years ago, so it's a little nicer than the other value resorts in that the furniture is newer and the TVs are bigger. I'm very excited about going! We will spend a day in each park, and we've opted for the quick-service dining plan. You do save money with the dining plans, but a.) the regular one just had too much food, and b.) all four times I've gone to Disney, I think we only ate at the table service restaurants twice. And both times were when I was seven. So it's a lot cheaper this day- we get two quick service (i.e. "fast food") meals, and two snacks per day. A snack can be an ice cream, a piece of fruit, popcorn, a bottled water, etc. All we'd have to pay for is breakfast (which some days the "snack" is just fine for me) and anything else we might want to eat.
It'll be weird flying down there because I have only flown once, and that was about ten years ago. I flew to Atlanta to visit my aunt and uncle and new baby cousin (who is now entering the fifth grade!) And then I wasn't responsible for my bags and getting myself places on time...we will see how that goes. Thankfully Brandon is very organized and generally punctual. I know on our way down to Florida we have like, 36 minutes to get to our connecting flight. But on the way back we have a few hours to kill in the Atlanta airport. Again, I haven't been there for about ten years, either. But from what I remember, it was very nice.

Blondies are called blondies because they aren't brownies.

I bet you've been wondering what I've been up to lately. Well, I'll tell you.

Work is supremely boring. There is not much to do except stare at the stuff we will have to deal with some time next week (hopefully) when our computer systems are back up.

Brandon and I went to meet with the associate minister at his church on Thursday about performing our wedding at my church. He's basically ok with it. There are a few things we need to do but he went ahead and put us on his calendar.

After this visit Brandon was in a good mood and was very nice to me. Which was cool.

We also had a long talk with his parents that night after dinner (tacos!) about wedding stuff. This was also cool.

Tomorrow we have our second "marriage class" which is fine, except I am sleepy and...yeah. It's a lame excuse for not wanting to go but I'm being honest. It'll all be fine, though.

Tomorrow we are probably going to go ahead and book our honeymoon. We definitely need to go ahead and book our flight, anyway, so we kind of figured, while we were at it, why not go ahead and book the trip? That way we can go ahead and set up our honeymoon registry, which is a cute idea even if no one shops off it (it would help, though!)

Also we are going to go do a tiny bit of shopping for the numerous baby showers we have been invited to at the end of the month. We will sadly be unable to attend, but will still send presents!

And I'm dealing with stupid stuff from school. All I'm going to say is I am starting to miss the simplicity of going to a small school like Bellarmine.

Also I made brown butter toffee blondies last night, because baking makes me feel less stressed. And I wanted something sweet...they were really good! And easy to make! I will put the recipe on here sometime soon.

I think that is everything. It's been a slow week in some ways, because every minute I have spent at work has felt like an hour. It's excruciating at times. But we occasionally find ways to have fun. But it also feels like this week has flown by, because...well, it just does. I can't explain it. Life has been moving pretty fast lately, it seems. Maybe part of it's because I work at a library- we're always thinking three weeks ahead (the books that were checked out today are due September 5th! SEPTEMBER!!! What is up with that? Didn't January just happen?!) Oh well.

I think I'm going to go back to sitting on my bed staring at my floor now. That's what I was doing before I came over to write this. Things are just kind of boring at the moment. A good tv show comes on in a little less than an hour, so I can listen to that and maybe I will do something productive like work on my room.

An update.

Howdy.
I hadn't posted in a while so I thought I would take the time to do so while I was waiting to stop feeling nasty (I always do in the morning. It's weird.)

I almost have all the save-the-date cards finished for our side of the family. Honestly I was hoping to have them done last week, but it just didn't work out that way. Then I am taking the leftovers (more than half) to Brandon's for his family to send off to whomever they wish.

We started our first week of marriage classes at church this past Sunday. It was very quiet. It looks like things will be ok. There are maybe eight or nine other couples in the class, and oddly enough, one couple is comprised of library employees (one of whom used to work at my branch- I got his job when he left!) We got a binder with worksheets to do for "homework" and a copy of a book called Marriage God's Way. The chapter titles of this book are the titles of each week's classes. I actually bought the book at Half Price Books a while back on a whim- it was on the clearance shelf for $1. Not bad. Anyway, we will see how next week goes, since the guy who normally teaches the class wasn't there this past week and someone filled in for him.

Brandon checked out the website for a company that offered him an internship thing during the school year, and applied for two of their open positions. Apparently they called him yesterday but he didn't answer because he was at work. When they offered him the internship last fall, I was under the impression that this was actuarial work, but apparently I was mistaken. It's just office work. But if it's full time, it's still better than what he has now, and it's still a start. He's going to call them back today. Hopefully he will get some good news. We need a little more money, since we need to start looking at apartments soon!

I didn't do a post about it, but my mom did. Our city was hit by flash floods last Tuesday and the downtown area got most of the damage- particularly the Main branch of the library. The damage estimate is now up to $5 million. We have lost an estimated 50,00 books (the processing center for new books was underwater, as was the sorting area- Main is the central hub for books passing between branches. Everything is sorted out there, then sent on to where it belongs, or wherever someone has something reserved. In addition, all the branches sent down all their graphic novels the week before in preparation for an Anime convention, and those were all lost.) All three Bookmobiles were destroyed, as was a brand new work truck, and more than 200 computers (many of which were brand new and awaiting delivery to the new branch we are opening, and extras for when ours break down.) The structural damage is pretty bad, too. The heating and air conditioning units were ruined, as was this chiller thing which prevents mold (which as I'm sure you can imagine, isn't very good for books.) The Main branch is one of the historic Carnegie libraries, and it's been around for more than a century. Now some of the walls are starting to buckle. But probably the biggest inconvenience is the loss of our computer systems. All the servers were housed at Main. They were under at least four feet of water when we heard from Computer Services early Tuesday morning. This means that our common hard drive is lost, we don't know the state of our entire card catalog (literally millions of items, housed in sixteen branches throughout the city) and none of the branches is able to log onto either the library program, or the patron program which allows people to come in and use our computers. What does this mean? Well, hardly anyone is coming into the library, for one thing, and for another, we are only able to check out by typing the patrons' library card numbers and the barcodes from the back of their items into Microsoft Word. We can't print their ticket with their due dates on it. We can't place anything on hold. We can't take money for late fees, and we can't check anything in. What are we doing with the items people are turning in, you ask? Putting them in boxes. Our workroom in the back of our library has two individual offices: one for the manager, one for the full-time reference librarian and the full-time clerk to share. Neither rooms are very big. My manager's office is full of about forty cardboard boxes from the stuff people returned on Tuesday. The other office is full of about thirty five boxes of items from Wednesday. After that, we moved on to filling up the meeting room. I didn't work on Thursday or Friday, and when I came in on Saturday, I discovered we were almost out of boxes- someone had gone down to the liquor store in the shopping center and got their extras. So we are storing books in boxes for rum and tequila and who knows what else. We don't know when the computers will be back up- when they are, it will be crazy. We will have to type into the system everything that people returned, and everything people checked out. We will have to find a place for all the items that belong to our branch, and we will have to send off the items that are going back to other branches. I don't know how long it will take for them to pick them up, though, because the sorting area at main is still heavily damaged, and we lost a work truck. Then when our stuff comes back, we will have to put it all away- after checking it in. When things are backed up at Main, we might get a big delivery of items- 8-12 bins of stuff coming back to us, plus items people have reserved (the Tuesday of the flood, we got 11 bins of those). I can only imagine what it will look like when we get a week's plus worth of delivery. Thankfully we will have two employees from Main helping us out through the rest of the month, as they can't go back to their library right now. Though at the moment, there isn't a whole lot for them to do.
In short, things are bad. Things MIGHT be back to normal by the end of 2009 or early 2010. And by normal, I include some people sifting through all the ruined books (many of which are unrecognizable), finding out to which branches they belonged, getting them out of the system, and ordering replacements. It's going to be horrible work. And that's all I have to say on the matter right now.

Lime Pie

Hey-o. I made pie yesterday. I was going to make two: make one, try it out, then make another today and take it to Brandon's. But I got frustrated a couple of times making yesterday's pie and decided not to make another one today. Anyway, I hear the pie is really good (it wasn't frozen enough last night and I didn't want to have any before work this morning.) So I decided to share the recipe with you, even though it isn't my recipe.

You will need:

• 1 pre-made graham cracker crust (I found one from Keebler, I think, that was extra big. "Two extra servings!" it said. Go with this if you can find it.)

For the filling:

• 6 extra-large egg yolks, at room temperature (separate them while they're cold!)
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  
• 2 tablespoons grated lime zest
• 3/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (4 to 5 limes)

For the topping:

• 2 cups cold heavy cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• Thin lime wedges

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar on high speed for 5 minutes, until thick. With the mixer on medium speed, add the condensed milk, lime zest, and lime juice. Pour into the pie shell and freeze for a few hours, until firm.
To make the topping, beat the cream on high speed (or with a whisk, but this will take a loooong time) until soft peaks form when the beaters are pulled away. Add the sugar and the vanilla and beat until firm. Spoon or pipe onto the pie and top with very thin lime wedges (if you want.) Freeze overnight.

This recipe comes from Ina Garten, of Food Network. But I doubled the recipe for the whipped cream because it didn't make enough to cover the entire pie. If you use a smaller pie shell, you will have too much filling. So I improvised a little. Bigger pie crust, more whipped cream, and supposedly, two extra slices of pie. We'll see how that works out. Also she calls this "frozen key lime pie" but it's not made with key limes, which come from the Florida Keys. So...it's Mexican Lime Pie, technically, since the limes I got came from Mexico. If they were Kentucky limes I could call it Local Lime Pie. You get the idea.

And finally, yes, this pie contains raw eggs, but as long as you aren't pregnant, very young or very old, and don't have a compromised immune system, it's no big deal. Just don't make a habit of eating handfuls of raw eggs every day, I guess.