Bloomington: Shameless self-promotion

As a reader of my blog, I'm assuming that you are a person who personally loves to watch me fail publicly and mock me afterward because I'm so blisteringly arrogant most of the time.

Today, my friend, is your day!

Tonight at 10pm-midnight Pacific Time (1-3am where I am), I'll be starting my weekly music show on local community awesomesauce radio station WFHB, which you can listen to by either being in Bloomington, Ellettsville, Nashville, or THE INTERNET. Yes, my hateful pals, you can go straight on to wfhb.org and listen to me streamin' live!

You don't have to, it's cool, but I feel like I should let you know just in case you're stalking me or something. It's gonna be cool. And I'm not going to just play Stadium Arcadium on a loop for two hours, no matter how tempting it is.

And Jennifer, if you're reading this, I promise I'm going to send you my list soon; today is the end of two very hectic things, and as soon as they're over, I will have a second to breathe. PROMISSSSE <3

Bloomington: Winter is the new summer

By that, of course, I mean that it has become my new vote for Most Bizarro Season.

The trouble with living near college students is
that the cocaine just piles up outside.

I know, I know: this is how it's supposed to be. Highs in the forties, lows in the twenties, snow, rain, wind. Personally, I've never dealt with lows in the low forties for any extended period of time, and at this point, I'm bundling up in eleven pairs of socks just to get the mail, because socks are the only clothes I have in excess, as it turns out. (I got to read the 7-day forecast on the radio on Sunday. It brought a tear to my eye, but since that tear didn't land on a mixing board and electrocute me, I will have to forever live with that shame.)

All this is to say that oops, it's been a long time since I updated my blog, and I blame the fact that my fingers are half-frozen and not up to doing much more than hitting the play button on Hulu. I hope you're buying it.

Speaking of which, I'm finally reaching that stage in my TV-watching cycle where I'm out of things I want to watch. I finished Doctor Who again, The Office really isn't that good anymore, Community's getting shelved, Doc Martin is probably over forever (SUCH A GOOD FINALE, have we talked about this?), Downton Abbey's season finale was the most depressing thing, and I keep trying to watch Once Upon a Time but I strongly dislike the faces of two of the lead people and really I only keep watching for Raphael Sbarge and the hidden Apollo Bars and things. My task for you, dear readers I don't have anymore: give me your Instant Netflix picks. Right now. Skip the rest of the post, go to the comments section. It's not going to get any better.

And he was delicious.

For those of you who disregarded my instructions and continued to read anyway, GO YOU! You get a list of foods that the husband and I have tried to make lately.

• Toaster Strudels (Boston Creme. Delicious, but my frosting decoration looked vaguely... cave art-ish).
• Carrot casserole (because we don't like getting repeat invitations to Thanksgivings).
• Vegetables au gratin (made up that word. Anyway, it was good stuff the first day, but there's only so much broccoli in cream you can handle, you know).
• Gingerbread without ginger (presented without further comment).
• Limited Edition Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (buy them now and eat them toasted and you can thank me later).

 Hi. Anyway. Instant Netflix, please? Or Hulu? Or whatever? I love rewatching Arrested Development as much as the next person who loves rewatching Arrested Development, but I can't keep this up much longer.

Did I forget to mention that I'm not above hypocrisy when Maura Tierney is involved?

Bloomington: A direct result of living in a culture that ingests too much sodium is that my sugar tolerance is not so high

oh sweet mother of Baldr what have we done

Bloomington: Suckas.png

I am never going outside again because everything is awful.

It's 41 degrees outside (5 degrees if you're a Celsius type) and has been raining for two days, and I'm starting to feel like a Californian.

I've never liked identifying as a Californian before, because California is a big place, and San Francisco is a weird, tiny place, and I can only ride buses and therefore can't really do much in the southern half of the state.

Perhaps I have been hasty.

Yesterday, I went outside. It was cold and wet and dry and horrid, and I shivered from inside my sweater/sweatshirt/gloves/boots until I overheated completely over the course of about fifteen minutes. By the time I got to a bus, I was sweating. I let my fingers freeze in a desperate attempt to cool the rest of me down, but two stinging hands later, I was still simmering and trying to avoid any extra movement.

The way home was much more action-packed, and after a successful run for my return bus, I found myself not only out of breath, but coughing for a good fifteen minutes from the cold air. I didn't start yelling about how it was consumption, and that was another struggle.

The diagnosis: I'm a Californian. I can run from it all I want, but my lungs know what my heart will not admit. Cough cough.

The file name for this is "suckas.png." Sometimes my plans backfire.

Not pictured: "Thomas Kinkade was here" graffiti.

I think everyone has pretty much picked up on this fact; we went with a faculty member to a state park in scenic Lawrence County, home of some astronauts or something, and comparisons to Muir Woods may have made the husband and I seem like snobs. Fine. So mote it be. Frankly, I don't know if I care much about what the staff of Spring Mill State Park think about me, because they sell boxes with the Confederate flag on them, and I will not be supporting them at any point in the future.

But some things are consistent from state to state; food exists in Indiana very similarly, if not identically, to how it exists in California, and I still want it. All of it. Now.

And so, with the help of my husband, the alter ego of We-Can-Just-Improvise Man, exciting things have happened on the edibility front.

1. Round foods have been attempted.

We tried to take down doughnuts and bagels in one day, and in doing so created rapidly expanding, deep-fried things that were delicious and tasted vaguely like doughnuts after we rolled them in sugar. There was much rejoicing. I needed them pretty badly, too, since I finished StarCraft II that day and emotional support in the form of sugar was extremely necessary.

(On that note, I wish they had kept Glynnis Talken as Kerrigan's voice, because I have no problem with Tricia Helfer and all, but I do have problems with Change, and I don't know. I didn't think she did the job EXACTLY THE SAME as Glynnis Talken, and it made me sad because I waited twelve years for this thing yo.)

But the bagels were disintegrated.

After the doughnuts, we had exciting bagel times, and managed to actually make bagels that looked like bagels. And tasted like bagels. And were amazing... like bagels.

They lasted about a day. And then they were gone.

What was my point? Oh, yes. Bagels are delicious and if you put a little canola oil in oatmeal with cinnamon and apples, it tastes a little doughnut-y anyway, so yeah, it's delicious.

2. Pizza and dessert are not mutually exclusive.

It's pretty easy. You just roll out enough crust dough to cover a baking sheet, grab a little extra to create a barrier between the pizza part and the dessert part, throw pizza stuff on one part, and break up a candy bar on the other part. When you take it out of the oven, you throw peanut butter on the candy and stick it back in the oven and take it out again five minutes later.

Then, you take a moment to smell the pizza. And it is a beautiful thing.

End food section. Begin TV section. Why were Downton Abbey, Doc Martin, and America's Next Top Model so depressing this week? And why did this have to be the week where all the NBC shows were on break? Aiya.

Open Letter: To Giants fans who ride MUNI and BART

Dear you guys,

It's not what you think.

I know it's been a while. I know that usually I greet you with glares and scowls and am not very nice to you when you're yelling a lot on buses that I get stuck riding on game days. I know that when I left, we were not on the best of terms, because MUNI and BART were places of peace for me, and if I couldn't get my afternoon nap as I took my L car home from Berkeley every once in a while, I was quite a grumpy Gus.

I miss you.

On the one hand, I miss you because you were on streetcars, ergo streetcars existed. Holy mother of Baldr, I miss streetcars. I miss my smooth (well...) rides through the tunnels and around the curves at West Portal and down Taraval all the way to home.

But it's more than that. I miss you.

It's the impossible, I know: me, missing seasonal loud, orange herds on the MUNI? Who even am I anymore? But I do!

We didn't always have very much in common, you guys and me, or at least not while you were caught up in the spirit of Finland's national sport (seriously, it's baseball). But there was one thing we had in common: San Francisco.

You love her. I know you do. And so do I.

The sports here are college sports. Everyone wears red and white--I'm sorry, cream and crimson--and then the cars block up the streets between us and the grocery store, and college kids yell a lot and barbecue stuff, and frankly, I don't trust them with fire.

Look, this is hard for me to admit, but it really does feel wrong, the red and white thing. I'm not even sure what the Indianapolis baseball team is called. (Unless it's the Colts, in which case, I totally know it, but I thought that was football or something, and I can't keep ALL the sports straight. Like I said, this is difficult enough as it is.)

So while I'm apologizing, I've got a few more to get off my chest. About you guys, I mean.

• I'm sorry for all the times I said I was a Yankees fan just to make Giants fans angry. 
• I'm sorry for the times I was all "but why wouldn't you want to root for winners instead?" to Giants fans, because I know you guys won the World Cup or something last year (or something). 
• I'm sorry for the time I called it the World Cup in my last apology. I know very well that it's the Super Cup.
• Sorry. I know. World Series. Couldn't be helped.
• I'm sorry I pulled my hood over my head and slouched over like a zombie person in my seat to try and scare you. I'm pretty sure no one bought it.

Let us never speak of this again.

xoxo
Adriane

Bloomington: Unemployment is my favorite kind of employment

That's not entirely true, nor am I entirely unemployed, because I have friends who let me do little telecommuting things every once in a while, hallelujah! and so I can do SOMEthing to keep my mind from turning into a jellyfish (although how cool would it be to be all "you guys, I've got nothin but a neural net! Suck on THAT!").

Anyway, working is good, money is good, thinking is good. But I am, as my mother would (and often has) put it, a bit contrary at times, so I've also done as much as possible to move my brain in a mush-like direction, or at least to keep it fat and happy, as it were.

No one thinks you're clever, Apocalypse.

I've spent a lot of time on Instant Netflix, which you probably already knew or could have guessed. After finishing The Cosby Show, I began to watch the 90s X-Men cartoon from beginning to end, because aside from the first episode, which my brother and I can basically recite from beginning to end and a lot of Storm battle cries and Jean Gray actual cries, I don't remember that many specifics.

The specifics, as it turns out, all point to one conclusion: X-Men was a weird cartoon.

Not that this is a bad thing! There's a lot of good, hearty dark stuff thrown in there, a lot of salient plot points that I didn't think they'd actually put into the cartoon from the comics. Plus, of course, Jubilee's voice actor was Loonette the Clown on Big Comfy Couch, so ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

MARY JANE THINKS YOU'RE A LOOOSERRRR

But good, hearty dark stuff can just get so dark, and so I've sort of drifted away from X-Men for the time being. I tried moving on to the 90s Spider-Man cartoon, which I remember as being absolutely hilarious.

And sometimes, it is. But by the last season, it's just as depressing as X-Men, but with more of a focus on Peter Parker's internal angst. And guess which season I started with?

(I brought this upon myself. I should have known that Peter wouldn't be talking to his gargoyle friend Bruce in the Hydro-Man episodes. Stupid Hydro-Man episodes. Even my mom gets creeped out by the Hydro-Man episodes.)

Oh, hey, Hank is being judgmental, try to act surprised.

So I gave up on that, too. I tried to remember what other things I actually used to do with my time during the summer, and I remembered that Royal Pains exists (in spite of its blatant disregard for how thoroughly they developed the sexual tension between Divya and Evan in the first season, because apparently overarching plot lines and relationships on summer shows mean absolutely nothing these days). So I watched the entire summer season in two days and it oozed in and out of my brain very quickly, if we're going to get all graphic about it.

I dabbled in some other shows, most of which I've seen before. Psych, for example. NewsRadio, of which I never tire. I watched that movie You Again, which needed a million times more Betty White to be remotely worth the time I spent on it. Whatever.

But, dear readers, a ray of sunshine: TV is back.

Oh, hey, Martin is being judgmental, try to act surprised.

Or it's starting to come back, anyway. Doc Martin is back, REJOICE! It only ever lasts for what, eight episodes a season? But no one cares, because every episode is beautiful. Doc Martin is a perfect show. My heart broke and mended itself like... twice or something over the course of the first episode, in the best possible way. Everything else can suck it. And when does Lost come back? Just kidding, I'll never allow my heart to belong to any other TV show again, because they all end. Doc Martin is the last one. Ever. Full stop. If it ever ends, I'll probably go back to reading books; that's how much I hate the emotional ups and downs of the capricious world of television. No more shows.

Oh, except for one.

I don't quite know what to say about this.

America's Next Top Model has returned for its seventeenth cycle, apparently an All-Star cycle, and while the first episode was relatively lackluster considering what it could have been with so many past crazy diva types on it, I have high hopes. Between Lisa who peed in a diaper in cycle 5, Bianca who implored Saleisha to "check her thighs out in the mirror" in cycle 9, and Camille from the second cycle whose signature walk was supposed to make her famous, among other, ah... personalities, this cycle can't be anything less than ridiculous. And so, Top Model, you have my attention, which is, I think, exactly what you wanted, n'est-ce pas?

That concludes my TV adventures. I've also been playing video games; 1993's Eagle Eye Mysteries in London and the fourth edition or something of Oregon Trail are teaching me all the things I've forgotten since I last played them each a decade or so ago. Bless.

Eagle Eye Mysteries taught me that Hans Holbein was Henry VIII's court painter, and the British Museum is awesome.

Oregon Trail taught me that some people have too much time on their hands...

...and that some pioneers look like Robert Louis Stevenson.

In conclusion, you should all watch NewsRadio.

Bloomington: Attitude meets altitude

Don't start with me.

I'm trying to reregulate my sleep schedule, which has taken a turn for the worse since my husband started work. Currently, the pair of us wake up at 7, he goes to work at 8, and I go back to bed. Yesterday I spent 12 hours asleep total, and so here I am, blogging at 8:30 in the morning because I'm too tired to do anything else.

Wait no I mean stay on this page it's going to be full of quality.

Anyway, have I mentioned that Bloomington is flat?

It's hard to take pictures when there's so much sky.

I think I spent a lot of my childhood aware of the fact that San Francisco was full of hills. From the time I learned to walk, this was never in question. What I failed to understand was that other places are not the same as San Francisco. As you've seen thus far, my journey toward a full understanding of this has caused me considerable confusion, and I'm still not quite sure why anyone bothers to build cities where there is no ocean, for without ocean, there is no ocean, and will someone please explain to me why this happens but that is neither here nor there. I do miss the ocean. Every day.

Hills, on the other hand... I can live without 'em.

Aww, but just look how happy they are.

Or so I thought. At first, my legs were grateful for the break, especially with the amount of walking that must be done when I don't feel like paying bus fares (which is all the time. Hurrah, unemployment). Now, though, I am sitting and watching them jitter up and down on the adjacent chair, as if they think they're going anywhere today. The joke's on them, because no. I am tired and my exploding head syndrome has been acting up and I am sick of it. Adriane OUT.

P.S. This post was going to have lots of pretty food pictures but NO YOU HAVE TO WAIT I AM TOO TIRED.

P.P.S. I AM AN ADULT AND I CAN CAPS LOCK IF I WANT

P.P.P.S. xoxo

P.P.P.P.S. which reminds me, Top Model comes back next Wednesday! TEAM SHEENA 4LYFE!

Bloomington: Season 2, Ep. 11

There's one other thing that I've learned from sitting around the house and avoiding the 90+ degree weather, and that is that Mojovision was a really weird episode.

Ummmmm kay.

Bloomington: Pictures of food and run-on sentences

"There was a dead cockroach in my office today." -my husband, in the middle of dinner


As we've heretofore explored, Bloomington is a place of rural charms, of American dreams and chirping crickets (seriously, WHEN DO THEY STOP??), and I am thrilled to be the first San Franciscan to ever be here for any other reason than school (I'm assuming. I've tried very hard, but can't think of another feasible reason for moving from San Francisco to pretty much anywhere in the Midwest besides Chicago, in all seriousness), because it means I get to chronicle the town from outside of the university.

The only football stadium you can see from space.

I use the term "outside" loosely, as the university campus takes up about a seventh of Bloomington's land area, and the rest of the town mostly exists to feed off of students' (and/or their parents') hard-earned (or whatever, no judgment here) cash. But I do live near the International Food Mart (where International may here be read as Asian, which serves my mochi needs just fine, thank you), so I consider myself one of the worldlier residents of Bloomington, even if my apartment complex has the word "campus" in it.

Also, I lived in Berkeley, so yes, I am going to pass judgment on all y'all's farmers' markets. Shortly.

Anyway, living in a place so dominated by its university has weird moments, like when you're in the far northwest corner of town and you turn around... only to see that the stadium looms just as large as it does when you're standing right in front of it.

(My husband points out that UC Berkeley's football stadium actually holds more people than Indiana's, but I lived adjacent to the Berkeley campus and never once saw the football stadium. Protip: the real difference is hills. Where ARE they??)

It's the kind of thing that drives me to homesickness, which, in turn, drives me to seek out things that I never thought I missed. I've been to one farmer's market in my life, and yes, it was magical, and I bought some lovely parsley and a CD from a very legit opera singer. I get about two points of street cred for that, right?

I hope so, because I'm trading each one of those hard-earned street cred points for two bullet points that make up a list of things I never thought I'd see at a farmers' market:

• People selling sausage
• Tables of Republicans

No one was even almost yelling. Are we sure there were politics involved?

Free green apple popcorn is still weird, though.

But there are some distinct upsides to living in a college town. Almost all of them involve the free food that the Student Union gives out indiscriminately just before the school year starts.

On the free food day in question, I started out feeling slightly guilty whenever I went back to get seconds on free food, but then realized that I could mitigate said guilt by lingering by the tables I liked until they offered the food to me themselves. The greatest trick the Devil played on mankind was convincing them he hadn't already been to their free food booths, as the saying may or may not go.

I didn't even want pickles. What is my problem?

Also, perks to being a faculty wife: orientation-type dinners where everyone ignores you and it makes you feel like you want to make some kind of dreadful power play and the voices say "yes, cause a scene, don't let them ever forget you AGAIN" and you try and suppress it because you're used to blending in, you've worked in tech, no big deal, but oh no, there is no power here and you MUST HAVE THE POWER and you drink your lemonade at a feverish pace, trying to drown out the murderous thoughts in your mind and then oh hey never mind I think I see the hummus

Bloomington: Catalyzing the inner hipster

If there's one group of people I have always chosen to scorn rather than to try to understand, it's hipsters.

Up until now, I have lived only in San Francisco and Berkeley. Both places are havens for Pabst-swilling irony junkies. As a native San Franciscan, I have spent a fair amount of time being a snob about this, railing about the gentrification of the Mission District and sneering my way down Valencia Street. You know. As I do.

Arguably, complaining about this makes me a hipster by default, but I like to think that I don't actually take myself that seriously. To quote Ellie on some episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation that happened ages and ages ago, whatevsies. None of this mattered when I was in San Francisco, because when I'm in San Francisco, I'm not too fussed about labels and what people think and such.

Nothing says "hayseed" like stunning fountains.

Enter: The Midwest. I am now in the Heartland, which I now know (or decided) is called the Heartland because it pumps all kinds of people and corn through the arteries of the United States, creating huge clots in places like San Francisco and... I don't know, what other cities are there? New York or something. That big one in SoCal that we're all scared of. (Just kidding?)

San Francisco may be a drop-off point for hipsters, but this whole region is their spawning ground. And I'm beginning to understand why they happen.

Firstly, Bloomington is a nice place. The people are nice, there are relatively few drunks on the street before nightfall (read: one, ever), and the housing prices are ridiculously low. The campus is lovely, and Indiana U has, from what I understand, a good set of general systems and professors and classes and such.

Here are some less thrilling things that I have noticed in the past two weeks:

Shel Silverstein wasn't kidding around.

1. This place is not meant for pedestrians. Sidewalks tend to a. end or b. fail to exist on a majority of streets. We had a particularly spectacular adventure on our first day in which a shuttle dropped us off one block away from our hotel and we had to drag our luggage across fields and construction zones and a bypass in order to get there. I'm still cleaning the pollen off of one of my bags, bless its little zippered heart.

Complicating the issue is how infrequent the buses are. There are nine bus routes in Bloomington Transit, and over the summer, at least one of them doesn't run. Others come once every forty-five minutes. Do you see my problem?

My inner pedestrian rages. Here I am, trying to get around without guzzling all the gas in the world, and what do I get for my troubles? Probably Lyme disease or something.

God should know better than to stand between
me and my Doritos at this point.

2. I'm a little uncomfortable with the fact that there are, um... inspirational books on display in the middle of CVS. I've never had a problem with books like Know Your Bible or Amazing Grace or Horse Tails from Heaven before, but there's something about having them purposefully shoved between me and my cough drops that really unnerves me. It's not a religion thing. It's just... books in my CVS. It looks wrong, somehow, like someone just left it there.

I dislike disorder in my drugstore. I like separation of church and state. And I really like when there are no horse books with deep philosophical messages in the space where I buy my nail polishes, if that's all right with everybody.

Also, I miss Walgreens. Nowhere else seems to have that super cheap Jordana brand makeup that I like to use because of aforementioned super cheapness.

What does this have to do with hipsters? I guess there's a lot less cohesiveness in this post than I'd hoped. Anyway.

3. These. Stupid. Crickets.

ALL DAY EVERY DAY BUZZING LIKE IT'S A FREAKING ELECTRICAL STORM AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS TAKE A NAP AND WHY CAN'T YOU ALL JUST BE NORMAL AND SMALL AND ONLY COME OUT AT NIGHT AND IF THE WINTER KILLS ME AFTER ALL AT LEAST I KNOW IT WILL TAKE YOU DOWN WITH ME

 Anyway, I'm turning into a hipster. And it's hot. And we all know that San Franciscans are biologically ill-equipped when the temperature exceeds 65 or goes below 50, so my brain's half-gone. Hug hug kiss kiss.

Bloomington: The Republic doesn't exist out here

Pppppbththth my photos won't upload, sorry folks. It's driving me nuts, because I really want you guys to see all the acres of cornfields! Spoiler: they look like cornfields. But maybe I could show you pictures of all the new Pop-Tart flavors we've unearthed on this journey (four!) and also the campus that takes up about 95% of the town of Bloomington, Indiana. Or whatever. You guys don't come here for text walls, you come here for DAZZLE! And I promise you that I will deliver... eventually. I don't know what happened; I think the SD slot on my photo upload-y gadget got sick of me jamming my memory stick into it (not a euphemism) or something. I will fix it or find another method of uploading or something. I pwomise. And also promise.

Boston: A sample of the cover letters I write when the jetlag hits

To whom it may concern,

As Thomas Edison once said, “Administrative assistants are all butts,” and I tend to agree. Nonetheless, I would like to apply to become one.

Let me explain: there are few portions of the human anatomy more useful than the human butt. Think of the time you spend sitting throughout the day. Now, think of how sucky that time would be if you had no butt. Nothing but bones! BONES! Bones. It would be painful. There are nerve endings in those bones, you know.

Like butts, administrative assistants cushion any good administrative skeleton, reducing allover pain and allowing for relaxation. This is especially true of the pelvic region.

As someone who has worked in tech, I am particularly familiar with the pelvic region. I am, of course, referring to how small, crucial departments, like IT, support the backbone of a company. I am also referring to how many IT workers could rightly be considered buttheads, but that is another matter for another time.

What was I saying? Oh, yes. Hire me. I need a job. I can't imagine why; calling my former coworkers “buttheads” seemed like such a good strategy at the time.

All my butts,

Adriane

Helsinki: Quick, pretend I update this regularly

Previously on this blog...

-Cosby Show dreams
-How to develop diabetes in Finland without really trying

More of the latter today, and less of the former. I know that this is sad for all of us, but it's time to let go.

'Twas a truly torrid affair.

I've been in Helsinki for almost a week now, having been run out of Vaasa for being too odd to live (apparently eating half a box of raw Mämmi, a traditional Easter food made primarily of rye malt, molasses, and more molasses, makes you some sort of freak?) (or maybe my language course just ended and I was never actually run out at all, but it makes a better story?). In that time, I have done, to paraphrase the poet Robert Frost, craploads of things before I slept, including some paths less traveled by and some paths that probably lots of people travel by all the time.

Five hours of trains took me to Helsinki, where I immediately started griping about the humidity. Ah, it felt good to be back. Some standard-issue nature was photographed, some food was probably consumed, I saw Scandinavian Music Group in concert, and they were quite good.

HIS GREATNESS CANNOT BE CAPTURED ON FILM.
Or, at least, not by my crappy phone camera. Sad day.

Music times in Finland continued on Monday with Raphael Saadiq (HEARTS IN MY EYES), who is from Oakland and therefore basically grew up a city away from me and performs in the Bay Area all the time, and so maybe it's a bit ridiculous that I saw him for the first time in Finland. Maybe. Regardless, there he was. And I'm going to be shamelessly fangirlish here, but HE TOUCHED MY HAND FROM ONSTAGE GAHHHHH

gah.

It was enough to turn my then-boyfriend from an unenthused bystander to a very, very enthused bystander, so I consider it a success on multiple levels. (Also, Raphael did the final encore without a shirt on. For art. And music. And aesthetics. So many aesthetics.)

Deep in the Caribbean, SUCKAS

Enough. You, the reader, have little enough respect for me as it is. So! The next day, I got married. NO BIG DEAL, you say, PEOPLE GET MARRIED IN FINLAND ALL THE TIME. But we had a Monkey Island-based cake, and so we are the winners. AND WHY WAS I NOT INVITED, you ask, at which point I would urge you to quiet down, because it's late at night here in Helsinki. And also, you were, but you would have had to know where it was, as well as pay for your own plane ticket. Anyway, all the blue food coloring we used may or may not turn certain bodily waste green, so you're welcome (especially for that mental image). And we're all still twitching from the sheer amounts of sugar we consumed, so you're also welcome re: your health being that much more intact.

Post-cake, we spent three nights at the very fancy, Kalevala-themed Klaus K. hotel, where we had free breakfast every day and blew at least one fuse. SO WHAT, you say, ignoring my request that you quiet down, PEOPLE GO ON HONEYMOONS ALL THE TIME, AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN LEAVE THE COUNTRY IN WHICH YOU WERE MARRIED.

Ah, my apologies! Did I not mention that our breakfast took place one table over from Finnish actress Pihla Viitala, with whom I am more than slightly infatuated? I suppose I would have, had you not been yelling so much, but no matter. We will move on to pictures, if you will stop yelling.

The Sibelius monument from underneath looks like the inverse of the Death Star explosion or something.

The sad part is that my feet are actually more tan than usual.

My first thought when I stepped into our hotel room was about whether or not the bathrooms were any good. Jennifer, if you're reading this, I hope you realize what an impact you've had on me.

Suomenlinna: where a drunk guy told me I sounded like I was from Eastern Finland, and also that he loved all people everywhere.

Temppeliaukio: it's over behind the tourist buses.

Hesburger is for those of us who are too ashamed of our tourist status to go to McDonald's. (Alt: That time the Imperials ambushed me at Hesburger.)

Helsinki: Dear dream journal,

I had a dream last night that I was the maid of honor at Denise Huxtable's wedding. This does not at all fit into established The Cosby Show continuity, which deeply upsets me.

Also in attendance at Denise Huxtable's wedding (maybe it was Vanessa's, in which case nothing about the dream particularly contradicts the canonical storyline) were a bunch of adorable children dressed up in silly outfits, at which point it was revealed that the theme of the wedding was The Lollipop Guild.

Also, I'm back in Helsinki, ttyl

Vaasa: Poetry in motion

It's been way too long and I promised I'd post about the cruise and blah blah blah blah blah and everyone's forgotten about my blog now anyway, so I guess I can do whatever I want. In 3 parts, I think.

Part 1: So, if you believe the rumors (and I know I do, even though I should probably know better), my biological grandfather was a sailor, and therefore I am entitled to run around and say things like "THE SEA IS IN MY BLOOD" and "THE OCEAN RUNS THROUGH MY VEINS" and "THERE ARE LARGE QUALITIES OF SALTWATER IN MY ARTERIES" etc etc.

JUST LOOK AT IT

There's no proof or anything to back up this heritage claim o' mine, but I'm convinced it's true, because why else would I be so fond of staring at boat wakes?

This is seriously what I do every time I'm on a boat (provided I'm awake enough; I think I get a pass for the time I fainted in a Wal-Mart and then was on a ferry five hours after my party with all the EMTs), and the cruise was no exception. I stare down at the foamsplosion (DID I MENTION THAT I AM A POET) until my neck hurts, and it's not good for me, ergonomically speaking. But I'm a sailor, so I will do what I want and then die of peglegs or something someday.

Part 2: In Finnish class, we've been inexplicably reading a lot of articles about the relationships between men and women (almost all of which make sweeping generalizations about men and women, which is extremely frustrating, especially as there's not a lot I can do to express myself properly in Finnish). Somehow as a result of this plus our lesson on adjectives, we ended up writing poems in small groups. I don't have mine, but the point is that it was about Michael Fassbender and George Clooney and why they are komea and tyylikäs, respectively. Oh baby oh baby.

I bet you thought I was kidding, too.

Part 3: I am a big proponent of Creamsicles, mostly because I'm hoping that if I pretend to be some huge vocal supporter of them right now, maybe they'll bring back those limited edition Orange Cream Pop-Tarts, which I thought were delicious.

Finland, however, goes one better: it has Tiger flavored ice cream.

Tiikeri ice cream tastes like someone ate a Creamsicle and then said, "You know what would be great? If this were actually delicious." But they said it in Finnish, and then, boom! TIIKERI FOR ERRYONE!

Except not everyone. Just me, because I bought it and I am in Finland.

Uhhhhh this post needs more pictures and then I'll leave you alone for a while. This is, for those of you keeping track at home, my last week in Vaasa before heading out for a week of supporting Helsinki's tourism industry and then heading on over to wherever I feel like because I'm unemployed and out of school and I can do what I want and I really am quite lightheaded right now so have some pictures.

That time I looked up from the foamsplosion for like five seconds.

We learned that every period was Alvar Aalto's blue period.

Disneyland Finland has the creepiest rides.

Do not be fooled. This goat only likes to play games with people's hearts, and no, I don't want to talk about it.

-Spinat. Is it the same in English?
-Spinach, yeah?
-I don't know. The Popeye stuff.

Vaasa: The self-discovery bit

Our assignment for class tomorrow is to speak (in Finnish, of course) for two hours MINUTES on something about which we have a strong opinion.

Here's the thing: I can't think of a single thing.

I've come up with two possible reasons for this that seem likely to me. The first is that I'm pretty sure that all my opinions are about things that no one in my Finnish class will care about: that Kelly Rowland was the best member of Destiny's Child, for example, or that pasta is best when it's filled with cheese.

This is, by no means, all of the candy I've eaten on this trip.

The second possibility is that there's a slight chance that I think my opinions are actually all facts: people who dislike Monkey Island are dumb, my junk food intake should never be limited by the laws of physics, etc. These things should be self-evident, and I can't quite comprehend how any rational human being could disagree. (And when one does, I just yell a lot. There's probably a better way to handle my life, come to think of it, but what would I blog about?)

The more likely explanation is weaksauce, which is why I pretended it didn't exist up until this paragraph: I'm rather averse to rocking the boat, and the problem with opinions is that someone always disagrees. I CAN'T HANDLE IT. (How have I lived this long?) And in Finnish class, I can't tell if everyone's dumbfounded stares are because I've just something horribly unacceptable or because no one was actually paying attention. (Hint: it's probably the latter.)

The rocks'll cost ya extra.

Anyway, that's enough about me. You came here for pictures of trees and water, and pictures of trees and water you will get. Also, someone remind me to post about the ~cruise~ we went on, thank you very much. I want to use the word "foamsplosion" in it, so it's in everyone's best interest that I get around to putting together said post in the near future.

Vaasa: Kaikki päätyy

Daniel Radcliffe: really tall for real

I'm trying not to eat any more sugar today, because I'm worried that I'm going to see the tagline "It all ends" flashing in multiple languages and colors everywhere I go (i.e. my room). In other words, I saw Harry Potter today (+100 crying points) and learned a few things.

No. 1: The larch

1. The Swedish word for "snake" is the same as the Danish word for "worm." As a result, the Danish girl I saw the movie with was probably not as terrified of Nagini as I was.
2. Minerva McGonagall is amazing.
3. I eat everyone's popcorn if they don't eat it first.
4. I really, really love forests full of birch trees, but almost every picture I take of them turns out blurry. I JUST GET SO EXCITED
5. I make entire blog posts to have an excuse to post pictures of birch trees.
6. Also to type SNAAAAAAAAAAAPE ;_______________;
7. SNAAAAAAAAAAAPE ;_______________;
8. We could go on and discuss how I occasionally ditch perfectly harmless socializing opportunities to play Knights of the Old Republic, which I've only played maybe a zillion times.
9. But we won't.
10. But we WILL discuss how the Golden Girls youtube channel (MY PLACE OF RESIDENCE) got taken down (AND NOW I AM ESSENTIALLY HOMELESS) (MAYBE THESE ARE FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS)
11. IT SUCKS.
12. But video games are cool.

Vaasa: File under "Things that speak for themselves"