Between school and work, it seems I've managed to go almost a whole month without blogging! The first big news is that summer semester is OVER! Never again. Seriously, it was tough. Everything was so condensed and fast paced. Never. Again.
One thing that really got me through the semester was BACON flavored SAUSAGE! Yup! The combined two of the most delicious things into one heavenly breakfast meat!
Big news. My brother Jeff is famous. This appeared in the BYU magazine that I recieve periodically. Jeff said he would sign it for me (it's going to be worth millions some day!)
Working at Oberlin has been SO much fun (you can tell by my smile)
I printed, cut out, colored and taped together a volcano for work. It took days, but turned out really nice!
I'm also in charge of the Oberlin Twitter account (follow me at @OberlinPL ), and have been taking pictures to post. This one is of Charlotte (the awesome lady who helped me get hired here) and the library scarecrow.
Before my friends, Jared and Chel, moved back to PA, I got to babysit a few times. The first time I was there I saw this:
Chair, colored on:
Mirror, colored on:
Eisle, pristine condition:
Ha! Kids! The second time I babysat, I was watching a show where a zebra was taking pictures of things. Everytime he took a picture of another zebra, they said "Cheese". Lulu, started saying cheese, so I whipped out my camera to take a picture. Did not go well.
I spent time with my core group of friends, but, with school and work I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted. One day we played boardgames. Mitch showed me how she can comb the cats using her fancy lady fingernails
Mitch and I met up for brunch a few days ago, after she got her hair done. It looked SO pretty I had to get a picture. She was not pleased that I was taking a picture. No regrets.
Over the past month, I manged to hurt myself in new and creative ways. The first way was flipping burgers in my cast iron skillet. There was obviously too much grease and it splattered all up my arm.
I notice I had a dark spot on my arm. "What is that?" I thought as I promptly poked it hard. It was a bruise. Does anyone else get surprise bruises that you have NO idea where they came from?
I was downtown by the water a few days ago, and it was so beautiful and calm I just had to take a picture! I forget how beautiful Cleveland can be.
Dad came to visit last thursday. It was SO nice to see him!! I even splurged and bought canned soda for him!!
Dad treated me to a movie, The 100 Foot Journey with Helen Miran. Dad really loved it, and I liked it. I was surprised that he stayed awake through the whole movie considering we were in the comfy chairs, and he has just spent about 10 hour driving!
I'm sad I didn't get any pictures of dad and myself. I guess I'll have to remedy that when I go to visit PA next month. I'm beyond excited to go home for a family reunion!! Gonna be the best!!
School starts up again next week, so, once again, the blogs will be few and far between...for now. Be patient with me dear readers. School can't go on forever (right? right?)
The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of busyness for me. I just finished my second summer course and a day later started my last course of the summer. Along with school being hectic I was hired for two part time librarian positions!!!! Trying to balance work, school and friends is going to be an interesting juggling act.
I started working at Oberlin Public Library on July 7th. I was so worried. I thought "What if this isn't what I remember it being from high school? What if I picked the wrong career path? What if?" Turns out I was worried for no reason. Working at OPL has been the most fun! The people I work with and the patrons are just so nice!
I am currently working on the Reference desk. I help patrons find books, answer questions and generally have a great time. Along with answering questions I've been put in charge of updating the displays. As you can guess already, I've decided to blog my monthly updates to the displays, which you can read here:
My first run at updating the display cases wasn't the greatest, but I can only get better from here, right? OPL is a small library that is always up for suggestions for improvement or self directed projects. Some of my self-created projects are looking up grants for the librarian to apply for, and working on website creation skills. If you have any other suggestions for projects that I might do to make the library better let me know! I'm always down for more ideas!
I start working at my second library on July 21st (in 5 days). I will be a substitute librarian for the Westlake Porter Public library. This means I'll be working anywhere from 0-24 hours a week at the WPPL library in various positions under the adult and youth services librarians.
Ok, enough about libraries! On to real life! This week I received a picture from my niece Sydney.
I was so excited I went out to the thriftstore and bought a frame for it:
and then hung it in my bedroom (don't judge the messy bed)
Last friday I had a girls dinner with Mitch at canary's. Mitch had her first experiance with rice pudding! Turns out she does not love it. I always associate rice putting with happiness/comfort food. My dad makes the best rice pudding and it is especially good when it's still warm...mmmmmm... I do miss dad's cooking!!
After dinner with Mitch, the group wanted to play minecraft. Since it was the last week of one of my courses I said I couldn't because I had one big project to finish. After some haggling we came to an agreement. I came over and worked on homework while they played minecraft.
Seriously, it was the most fun I've had working on homework! Dom and Ken are running a wither quest which I'm kinda excited to see what happens.
That's pretty much it. Between work, friends and school my blog entries are going to be few and far between for a bit. Finally, I'd just like to state how excited I am to be going back home for Joel and Kate's wedding in September. Only about 2 more months!!
My current course is a Young Adult class. I've completed some assignments I'm pretty proud of so I thought I'd throw them in a blog!
First, we had to create a pathfinder for young adults. A pathfinder is basically a reference guide of various sources on a topic. The topic I was assigned was Teen dating and relationships. I created a website for it, which can be found here:
The next thing I had to do was something called a Booktalk. You basically spend 30seconds to 1:30 talking about a book and why it's aweome (without giving away spoilers):
I spend soooooo much time trying to perfect my video, I ended up with a lot of outtakes, which can be found here:
I'm really enjoying this course because it's more than just "write a paper". It really allows us to be creative!
The past few weeks have been mostly uneventful. I've been spending a lot of time working on school work. Thusly I have very little to blog about. Some things that did happen:
I was getting ready to go hang out with friends when Joel called to talk. After talking for a few minutes I told Joel I had to go to meetup with friends. Joel said "hahaha, you don't have friends!" To prove him wrong, I sent him a picture of me with all of my friends. BURN:
This past Saturday, I met up with Leeann, whom I hadn't seen since our Canada vacation. We went to Yours Truly for breakfast and made sure to wear PJ's. We're all about the comfy for girls breakfast. We spent a solid 2 hours gossiping and giggling about everything from boys to, well, boys lol.
Leeann, who had only got her ohio drivers license the year before actually bought her very first car. I am so happy for her! It's a cutie for a first car!!
That evening I met up with Mitch, Dom and KW at Dave and Busters for dinner. Believe it or not, I actually got Mitch to agree to a picture!!!! So cute right?!
We, of course, played minecraft after. I took over KW's castle that he made and am carpeting it and adding pretty colored glass to it. So pretty.
Sunday, I realized I needed new shoes. I've been trying to go to the gym 5 times a week and this obviously is not ok with my shoes as I literally wore a hole in them.
Those shoes decided to start wearing a hole in me too (well a blister):
Dad gave me some extra money (because he's literally the best dad EVER), so I could get some new shoes that won't hurt me. I went to the New Balance store in Crocker Park and bought the exact same shoes I had before, but in a different color:
You may be asking yourself: "If Jeannette is working out so much, is she losing weight?" Why yes I am! Thank you for asking. Today is my 4 month diet-aversary. I've been doing keto (basically Atkins). After 16 weeks I've lost 38.6 lbs (2.4 lbs a week!!) I went from a tight size 26 to being able to fit into my old size 22's:
While I don't look a whole lot different, I've got more energy. When I started working out, it was tough to get the treadmill up to 2.4 mph. Now, I'm easily up to 3.4 mph! I can walk without getting winded! It's the little things that make dieting worthwhile! Huge thank you to mom and dad for being so supportive in both my schooling and dieting!!
I don't know if I mentioned how busy summer semester is, but it's pretty rough. My first summer course was a library business management class that was a full semester jammed into 3 weeks. I was working on it EVERY DAY! Usually I take Sundays off (because the library's only open from 1-5pm), but I had to work on Sunday last week to get all of my work done. Because I'm most productive in the morning and the library isn't open, I used the Starbucks gift card Mitch gave me and settled in at Starbucks. I actually got a lot done! Huge thanks to Mitch for the gift card so I could still get school work done for "free"!!!
I guess all of that hard work paid off because I just barely eeeked out an A!!!!!!! Hooray for keeping my 4.0!!!!!!!
I start my next class today. It's a 6 week course so hopefully it won't be as bad...I guess we'll see lol.
To celebrate the end of my first summer course I went to see the movie Edge of Tomorrow. It was really good. It had everything, romance, action, adventure and humor. Basically its like groundhogs day for war.
I saw it at the AMC Westwood. It is HANDS DOWN the best theater in ohio to go see movies at. The matinee prices are 6.50 (5.50 for movies before noon) AND they have these recliner chairs. Cheap and comfortable? Yes please!!
I've been trying to cook more. One thing I tried to make was this chicken and broccoli masterpiece. I twas chicken, brocooli, onions, cream cheese and chicken stock. I guess I didn't let the chicken stock and cream cheese simmer long enough before adding to chicken and broccoli because it was a bit runny. It still tasted like my mom's chicken divan I remember from childhood. So yum!
Later in the week dad sent me this picture:
While I tried to match this (how hard is it to put tuna in an avocado?), I couldn't get it exactly the same, but it was still a quick easy and delicious meal!
To try and save on energy I made black out curtians. By "made" I mean I took some sheets and draped them over the window. What do you think?!
Last friday night, after watching the new tom cruise movie, I met up with KW, Mitch and Dom for minecrafting, and then once it got dark Dom made a pretty impressive fire for smore's! While we were hanging out, I had one of those "there's no where else I would rather be then right here, right now" moments...and then a scary deer was stomping around near by and snorting angry!!! Deer can be scary!
Saturday and Sunday were my break between summer courses. So, what did I do? Well, let me tell you (sorry about the slightly inappropriate wife beater I wearing, it gets mightily warm in my condo):
I am soooooo over movies. I watched a full 14 movies in 2 days. Movie after movie after movie gets old really quick. Here are the movies I watched:
I was going to try and list my favorites, but I enjoyed most of them, so instead I'll give a quick rundown of each movie in the order I watched:
1. Blue Valentine: Ryan Gossling always equals yummy. He was the best part of this movie, the rest was really sad and heart wrenching. Did not like, will not watch again.
2. Father of Invention: While I usually enjoy Kevin Spacey, this movie was a solid "meh". I played minecraft while watching this because after 20 min I realized (correctly) that this movie was gonna pretty lame. Would not watch again
3. Take Me Home Tonight: The only great part of this movie was the really great 80's music. The rest was a standard young adult party themed movie. Would not watch again.
**So far the movies I've chosen have been poorly done and I'm wondering if I've made a mistake. Can I get through another 11 movies after this crap??**
4. Premium Rush: I love anything with Joseph Gordon Levitt. I had watched Looper earlier in the week and was excited for this movie. I was not disappointed. It was an action packed movie that made me desperately want to take up bike riding! So COOL! Would watch again (and again, and again).
5. Just My Luck: A rom-com with lindsey lohan and the captain from the new star trek movies. Sadly, I really enjoyed it. It was cheesy and silly and just my type of movies. I might watch again.
6. Robot and Frank: An ageing thief, Frank, with Alzheimer gets a robot to help him. I LOVED this movie. The pain of Alzheimers and dealing with life and love and robots really was wonderful. This was my favorite movie of the lot. Would watch again!!
7. Jumping the Broom: An African American comedy about marriage. The term jumping the broom comes from slave times when slaves weren't allowed to get married so they would "Jump the Broom" to commit to each other. It was really good. The family dynamics and various forms of love were heart warming. Would maybe watch again.
***It was 11pm on Saturday when I finished movie number 7. I decided to crash and start again tomorrow. Half way there!!**
8. Headhunters: When I was picking out movies for my 14 movie binge, I decided to try and be international and pick a foreign film. I selected a norweigin (or sweedish??) movie about an art thief vs. professinal killer. It was surprisingly good. I always assume foreign films are going to be boring and artsy. Nope, this movie was action packed and great. Would watch again.
9. When Harry met Sally: I had never seen this movie, which is strange considering how much I love rom-coms. It lived up to the hype. Even though it was decades old, the dating advice and jokes were still relevant. Would watch again (and again!!)
10. The Ides of March: Another Ryan Gossling movie, which is the only reason I picked it. Man, I am 0 for 2 with Ryan Gossling movies. This one was another dud. It actually really turned me off from politics. So dirty. This movie left a bad taste in my mouth. Would NEVER watch again. Blech.
11. Surrogates: After the yuck that was the Ides of March I decided to watch a movie I had seen before, Surrogates. I loved this movie as much the second time (if not more). The premise is a future where people don't have to go outside, they send their robot surrogates to do their work for them. Action packed, and, you know with Bruce Willis it's gonna be good. Would, and did, watch again.
12. The Fountain: One of my favorite all time Darrin Aronofsky movies. It's beautiful and heart breaking. I usually have to be in a mood to watch this, but, I figured I'd add an artsy-fartsy movie to my 14 movies and I'm glad I did. I forget, between watches, how much I love this movie (so much!) Would, and did, watch again.
13. Contagion: A huge cast! I'm not even going to try and name everyone, but it's all about a virus outbreak and people trying to deal with the virus spreading and killing a lot of people. Was surprisingly good. Not the type of movie I would usually enjoy but I really liked it!
**LAST MOVIE**
14. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: I decided to save an Adam Sandler rom-com for my final movie. After 13 movies I just wanted something funny and silly to finish off the run. It was just that! I really enjoyed it (maybe again? I'm not sure if I've seen this before?) and see myself watching it.
So that's it! 14 movies in 2 days. Suck it KW. That being said, I'm not proud of myself. This was a horrible idea and I would not recommend it to anyone...ever.
A huge thank you to North Olmsted library, my local library for providing free movies for this crazy bet!
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