Renaissance Faire Take 2

The future doctor and the charming knight had a weekend planned to celebrate his impending birthday.

They survived a long, harrowing trek, all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina. Once they arrived, they feasted upon pizza, garlic pretzels, and ice cream, and watched many episodes of house buying shows so that they did not have to leave their room at the inn.

The next morning, however, it was time for them to embark on an adventure...

And they did. There was plenty of dancing, and music, and so much delicious food for them to consume.

There was also time for the future doctor to be pampered. At her last faire, her hair was still too short to be braided in any manner, and so this time, she was determined to take advantage of their short hair offerings.

They witnessed the majestic flight of a variety of birds of prey, and even spent some quality time with a pirate.

No dragons were vanquished that day, but it was probably for the best, as both the future doctor and the charming knight desperately needed a more relaxed weekend. And battling dragons is certainly not a relaxing endeavor.

Time for the Holiday Season!

Now that Halloween is over, and Thanksgiving is approaching soon,I can prepare for my favorite time of year!

Surprisingly, considering how much I hate the cold, I absolutely adore the holiday season. Everything is so sparkly and colorful and happy and fun! And it's the perfect time of year to cuddle with a blanket and a mug of hot chocolate, preferably with marshmallows in fun shapes or colors.

There will be several holiday projects still to come, primarily in the form of office decorations and homemade christmas gifts, but for now, I started with a wreath.

It started with a seemingly endlessly line of strips of fabric, cut to approximately the same size, in varying shades of cream, blue and green. It's what I had lying around and red and green is overdone anyway ;)

But eventually, the strips of fabric were wound around the wreath form, and hot glued in place (memo to self, buy a new hot glue gun). 

Just a sprig of fake holly left to be added and then...

Ready for the Holiday season to commence!

Manicure Monday

In a moment of procrastination from reading, the future doctor decided to switch out her nail polishes from spring/summer to fall/winter. 

Cooler weather is not the future doctor's favorite, but fall is also full of delicious food and deep, rich colors. The bright pastels and neons of summer may have been put away for the next 6 months, but they've been replaced with burgundies and deep purples and golden-browns, full of glitter and shimmer.

For this week's manicure, the future doctor decided to start with a fairly new polish to her collection, a color that she had not yet worn past testing it out before purchasing- Butter London Scuppered. The base is a medium reddish-brown, flecked with glitter in gold, red, and green. 

Fall may not be the best season ever, but it does lend itself to some pretty decent nail polish colors. And now, back to reading!

Fall= Pumpkin-y goodness

Fall is easily my favorite season for food. For one simple reason- pumpkin-flavored everything. Well, and cinnamon, and spices, and warm, homey flavors, but that doesn't work with my title quite as well, so we're going to ignore this whole sentence.

In my quest for pumpkin dishes that I could make at home, I came across a recipe for Pumpkin Maple Macaroni & Cheese. I'm not sure how it sounds to other people, but to me it sounded like the most amazing idea in the world! I love pumpkin. I love maple syrup. I love macaroni & cheese. 

So I gathered my arsenal of ingredients.

(there was also a bottle of Abita Amber than didn't make it into the picture. Sorry!)

The recipe was pretty simple to follow. Eventually, I got to the baking step. This also meant that, for the first time, I got to use my Le Creuset casserole dish that the most awesome mom in the world found for me!

The finished product was everything that I hoped it would be. It was creamy and cheddar-y and pumpkin-y. The perfect fall dish. Plus, it made so much that I will be eating leftovers for daaaays. 

Until next time, have a happy fall everyone!

Grading Forever

In case anyone's been wondering what I'm going to be doing all weekend...

Now that students have turned in their first projects, I get to spend many hours grading those first projects! From what I've glanced through so far, they did a pretty good job, so this should be fun. 

Unfortunately, part of teaching in the 21st century and using technology in the classroom is that I don't  have a pretty stack of fresh, neat paper to photograph. So, instead, accept this photo of my students reflections on their writing progress so far (book strategically placed to protect the private information of my students)!

And yes, we're reading Rosemary's Baby in one of my classes! It's for Pregnancy and Prisons, which is quickly becoming the best class that I have ever taken.

So that's it for this week's edition of "In the Life of the Future Doctor". I'll see you all next time!

Manicure Monday

It was a weekend when the future doctor realized that her nail polish had been on her nails for several weeks and was nearly all chipped off- aka, not an attractive look in the least.

The future doctor looked through her copious, excessive amounts of nail polish for a color that would perfectly encapsulate the start of the semester.

And there it was, the perfect shade of Kentucky blue. It was also, coincidentally, the same color as the TARDIS, and thus a reminder that someday she and her charming knight would become time travelers and would run off to have adventures all over the universe!

In the meantime, she would continue to teach, study, and cuddle with her bright green stuffed lime (and all the other stuffed animals taking over both her apartment and her office). 

Until the next Manicure Monday!

Reasons I Fail at Productivity

Alright, well, that title might be a bit of an exaggeration. I am getting all of my work done! I could just get it done a lot faster and more efficiently than I currently am.

I may not have cable in my apartment (one of the best decisions I ever made), but I do have Netflix! I'm starting to think that having Netflix is a bad decision as well, but hey, you can't get everything right ;)

So, in between reading for my classes, writing lesson plans, prepping powerpoints and various activities, and volunteering at church, I have been re-watching some of my favorite shows, and getting hooked on some new ones.

Re-watching...

Doctor Who (obviously)

How I Met Your Mother 

Say Yes to the Dress

Started...

Supernatural (remind me not to watch this late at night ever again)

Orange is the New Black

What else should I be doing while I'm avoiding getting real work done? Yes, updating my blog. I promise, I'm going to try to get better at it. In the meantime, if you have other shows that I should absolutely start watching immediately, leave them in the comments or e-mail me! I'm always on the lookout for things to keep on in the background.

And back to work!

First Day of School

Belated...This was intended to post last week. Sorry all!

Well, it is official.

I survived my first day of teaching undergraduates!

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of myself on my first day (insert an imaginary photo of a Lilly Pulitzer dress here)...

And forgot to photograph my students working on their presentations of the syllabus (imagine another consolation photo of some of the finished posters).

But, I did make it through and it went pretty well. And my lesson plan is done for Friday, so my students can look forward to learning all about what inquiry is.

As for my own classes, they started today. I had my pedagogy class this morning, and I take American Lit 1800-1860 this evening. Pregnancy and Prisons will have to wait until next Tuesday. All in all, it's been a pretty great first week of school.

Moving In

It's been a crazy few weeks with moving from North Carolina out to Kentucky, getting my apartment set up, and starting orientation (1 week down, 1 left to go!). Now just a week and a half left until I teach my first ever college class. This could be awesome or it could be a miserable failure. I suppose we'll find out in a few weeks.

In the meantime, I have returned to share some pictures of my almost-completed apartment! There are a few projects left to finish up, but nothing that needs to be done in the immediate future.

And so, without further ado, or unnecessary wordiness, here are the newly taken photographs of my teeny tiny apartment.

My living area and dining area

the other view of my living area

My kitchen

My study

My bedroom

And my bathroom!

That's all I have for today. Hopefully soon I'll have a more complete update on life here.

Until then,

Emily

Monday Manicure 7/28

I offer my apologies that this post is actually a week late, since this is the nail polish that I had on for the past week. 

Summertime calls for bright polish that shimmers in the sunlight, especially when one is planning a weekend trip out to the coast to visit a friend for the first time in about two years.

It's hard to believe that my next manicure will be the one I wear when I move to Lexington! 

Baking Wonderland Chronicles- Challah

Sunday afternoons are simply the perfect time for experimenting with new bread-making recipes. Today's experiment- homemade challah! I developed quite the fondness for this type of bread a few years ago, and when I saw a recipe for it in my bread cookbook, I knew it had to go on the list of things to make.

And so I began by mixing the batter. The dough desperately wanted to stick to the sides of the bowl. Finally, I managed to coerce it into cooperation, and turned it out onto the table for 10 minutes of kneading. 

And then it was time for braiding. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I only had to restart this process once! Unfortunately, I spaced and did not remember to take a picture of this process, so we will all take a moment to close our eyes and imagine the dough above split in half and arranged into two beautiful braids.

...alright, we'll move on now. 30 minutes in the oven, and the apartment smelled absurdly good. It was physically painful to wait those last 10 minutes, but the waiting was oh so worth it.

The crust was nice and crunchy, but the dough was so soft and sweet. I may up the sugar the next time I make it, but this recipe will definitely make it onto my regular rotation. Nom nom nom. 

And now time to finish my Harry Potter movie marathon. Until next time!

Monday Manicure (a little late)

It had been a long week of traveling and the future doctor's nails were not in the best of condition. Her green nail polish had chipped off and just did not look very pretty.

She was sitting in an empty apartment, waiting for the cable guy to come set up the cable and internet (spoiler alert- he didn't show up), and had a shoebox full of nail polishes sitting next to her.

And so she did what any reasonable person would do- she made her nails purple and sparkly.

Happy end of vacation!

For those who are interested, the purple color is Essie's Under Where? and the sparkle at the tips is Zoya's Tomoko.

The Future Doctor and Her Tardis

To really tell this story, we have to backtrack about 3 years, to when your lovely narrator the future doctor, as she shall be known for the duration of this post, had just returned to the US from London and was running out of things to watch on netflix. She had an eccentric, brilliant friend J, the future MD, who was, as many brilliant people are, a huge fan of Doctor Who. J was baffled by the fact that the future doctor had lived in London for an entire school year and had never seen a single episode. 

The future doctor, however, disillusioned by her pretty miserable experience in that city, just rolled her eyes and said that there was no way that she was watching a popular British show. And so they moved on. 

Just over a year later, the future doctor was at her parents' home on winter break when her brother forced her to turn off her beloved wedding dress shows so that he could watch some absurd episode of that same Doctor Who show. The future doctor was not pleased about this edict, but as her episodes had been pre-recorded, she agreed to turn them off and return to them later.

And thus began the future doctor's experience of the Doctor. The first episode she ever saw was The Snowmen, and as that episode was 7 seasons into the current run, needless to say she was puzzled by much of what happened. However, she was also intrigued.

When she returned to her apartment in New Orleans, she found that the first few seasons were on Netflix, and so she sat down to watch them in a moment of procrastination from grad school. The rest is history. Since then, the future doctor has forced everyone she could to watch the show, and now owns many cheesy items of Doctor Who memorabilia, including an awesome Yahtzee set and several Christmas ornaments (thanks Mom!). 

And so when she heard that she would have the opportunity to visit a Tardis, her brain shut down from excitement. She spent two days planning the perfect outfit, trying to determine what she would wear if she were to actually run away with the doctor. There were so many considerations, but she finally went with a spring dress because it photographs well and she figured that she could run in a dress if she needed to.

The warehouse was full of incredible things...

But nothing was more incredible than the big blue box (which, unfortunately, was not actually bigger on the inside, but did house folding tables!).

 

And the future doctor was united with her Tardis. And it was wonderful.

The End.

I have returned!

I know I've been gone for a long time, and I offer my sincerest apologies for my absence. In May, I started the process of moving and am now currently in transit, and will be for the next month and a half. Would you ever think that "where do you live?" would be a difficult question?

This may be crazy, but I actually think this process is really fun! I'll be travelling around and seeing new states for the next few weeks. I have a trip lined up (starting next Friday!) to see Charleston, SC and Williamsburg, VA. There will be beach days and fancy restaurants and historical adventures. Basically, it'll be an amazing trip. 

And so for now, I'm spending my days hanging out in a hotel room in Georgia. And what better way to help the time pass than to watch tons of netflix and paint my nails the most obnoxious shade of yellow that I own? It's summer after all, the perfect season for being overwhelmingly bright! Plus, doing my nails at home is a major way that I save some money (although  from time to time, I may end up spending a lot of that savings on buying cool new polishes...you didn't hear that from me).

So, until I have something more entertaining to talk about, here is my manicure with Butter London's Wellies polish!

The Baking Wonderland Chronicles

It is my mission for this summer to get really, really good at baking bread. I'm not a bad baker by any means, but I don't have a whole lot of range. And so, while I am in limbo between my current tutoring job and my new life as a PhD candidate this fall, I am going to embark on a new quest- Mission Bread-Making.

In my last post, I mentioned that I bought a bread-making cookbook. Enter Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. This morning, after spending about two hours messing around online and making phone calls to sort out a newly cancelled vacation (thanks for the new orders, army), I made my way to the kitchen and began the process for making Cuban Bread, the first loaf I attempted out of this cookbook.

I won't bore you with the details, but essentially the recipe involved dumping a lot of ingredients into a large bowl and mixing them all together. Oooooh, aaaaaah!

I then mixed in some hot water, stirred it all together (adding more flour until it wasn't sticky anymore), and then turned it out onto the counter to knead it until it felt "elastic and alive". I know that sounds like a bizarre term to use for dough, but it actually makes a lot of sense when you get to that point. "You know it when you feel it." And then, time to let it rise!

Once it's risen, there's only one step left- baking! This is the most excruciating step because it smells so, so good but you can't take it out early or it won't be the right texture and consistency (I'm assuming). And so you wait, maybe watch an episode of Doctor Who, read a book, get sucked into the wormhole of personality quizzes on the internet, etc...

And then finally...

BREAD!

This loaf was so good. The outside was really crunchy and the inside was almost creamy, it was so soft. I am very pleased with my new cookbook so far and I can't wait to try something else. This one will definitely be making it into my regular rotation, though!

If you've got any suggestions for types of bread that are especially awesome, please feel free to send them my way!

Easter Adventures: Portland Edition

Every year, the lovely Lizzy and I go on an Easter vacation together. It's a tradition that started in Berlin, and was carried on in New Orleans, Mexico, and now Portland. Every year we choose a new place, meet up there or travel there together, and spend the weekend adventuring around. 

My trip started with a very early morning and a small series of plane rides. I have little to no memory of the flight to San Francisco as I was asleep before we even took off. I suppose that's what waking up at 4:30 in the morning will do to you. On the second flight, I sat next to a woman who owns a bookstore in San Francisco, The Booksmith. I haven't been there yet, but it's definitely on the list of things to do when I finally make it to San Francisco! She was a lovely woman and we chatted pretty much the entire flight.

Upon arrival in Portland, Lizzy, my aunt, uncle, and I all headed straight for VooDoo Doughnuts! It was among the most overwhelmingly sugary experiences of my life. A fluffy, sugary doughnut topped with heaps of frosting, accented with a heavy smattering of oreo pieces. As a lover of sickeningly sweet things, I was in absolute heaven.

Our next stop was Powell's Bookstore, the number one item on my list and one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Portland in the first place. It did not disappoint. Aisle after aisle of books, new books juxtaposed with old. I managed to walk away with only two books: a copy of Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde and an old bread-making cookbook that I intend to start practicing with tomorrow!

The next day, we visited the Japanese gardens. I also got the chance to experience my very first Pacific Northwest rain! You might think rain is rain, but this was so different from any rainy day I've experienced anywhere else that I've lived. It was a soft rain, and cold but not miserable. I actually quite enjoyed it. Despite the rain, or perhaps because of it in some cases, the gardens were wonderful. Everything glistened and colors were made even more vibrant.

On our final day, we all took a trip out to Silver Falls State Park to go see one of the waterfalls out there. The weather was much warmer this day, with no rain in sight. We hiked down a path to one of the falls, and stood in a small cavern underneath the water, which was an incredibly experience. For as much as I love living in or near cities, I have to admit that one of the things you really miss out on much of the time is just how incredible nature is. 

It was a wonderful trip. Thank you so much Aunt Mary and Uncle Lew for letting us stay with you! We had an absolute blast. I have to go back again at some point. But for now, I'll be looking forward to where next year's Easter adventure will take us.

Brain Breaks

For those who don't know, my current day job involves teaching first and second graders to read (I'm a private, in-home tutor primarily for early elementary school). I absolutely love what I do! The kids are hilarious and wonderful, and it's so much fun to get to spend time with them every week.

Part of the deal that comes with working with students that young, though, is that their attention spans aren't always the longest. And so, brain breaks become extremely important! Because my time is so limited with them, I try to keep the brain breaks as productive as possible, without them feeling like actual "work". What we do during those times depends on the kid. I have one student who loves to play hangman more than anything, so I'll usually set a restriction on the word related to what we're doing (syllables, certain vowel sounds, etc...) and let him loose.

For some of my kids who are more into drawing, I've started doing a drawing/writing exercise. You know the old game where you hold a notebook on top of your head and try to draw? Well, it turns out that first grader arms are too short for them to reach all the way to the top of their head! So, instead, we hold the boards out in front of us, try to draw, and write a sentence about the results. It can end up being pretty hilarious sometimes!

A few photos require some explanation. The top right is supposed to be a horse. I had to cut off the text, but she wrote "My horse is not good. I mean, look at it". I started cracking up at that! It was so hard to keep myself composed. In other news, never underestimate a first grader's ability to make a deep philosophical statement, even if they don't really understand what they're saying. "This is a fish and it is not a fish". It is intended to be a fish, but it certainly doesn't look like one. So which matters more, what we intend or what happens? Which one is real? Anyway, not what she meant, but she wrote the sentence entirely on her own, and I thought it was worth some more thought.

And, of course, one of my drawings to end on!

Her fish may not know what it is, but my fish is very happy to be a somewhat misshapen fish.

Have a great Easter weekend everyone!

A Tale of Food

There once was a fair, yet stubborn and impatient, lady who enjoyed the occasional weekend of reverie and escape from the toils of everyday life (in case you haven't guessed, that lady is me). At times, those weekends would take the lady into a world of Medieval and Renaissance fantasy, sometimes erring far more on the side of fantasy than historical accuracy. But that's a monologue for another day.

It was the night of the premiere for season 4 of Game of Thrones. The previous day had been spent at the Medieval Fair, where both the lady and her handsome knight earned themselves awful sunburns and learned a valuable lesson about the importance of sunscreen. This present day had been spent in preparation of an absurd amount of food for only two people, although every bit of it was delicious.

There were lemon cakes...

Roasted pepper and goat cheese dip...

And foreign coca cola; aka, the ones that use real sugar!

And of course, the crown jewel of all, the beautiful and horrendously time-consuming Daenerys TART-garyen. It was delicious, but oh so labor intensive. At least the fair lady had her charming knight to help her arrange the berries into the lovely picture that you see before you. Three-headed dragons made of fruit don't build themselves, after all.

And so the two revelers feasted (not pictured were the Parmesan-crusted zucchini and pulled pork). While they ate, they delved into episode one of the new season of Game of Thrones. If any show is going to toy with a viewer's heart and nerves, this one is it. The episode didn't disappoint, throwing in a copious number of deaths, an unexpected friendship, a series of misunderstandings, and a solid amount of flirtation.

It was a long day of preparation, but a lot of times, that only makes the end result more satisfying. It was a beautiful feeling to sit down and devour food that had taken me hours to produce while watching a show that I have been waiting months to see again. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am an incredibly impatient person, but every once in awhile, I manage to see the benefit of slowing down, and taking time to get things right.

And, of course, tarts, lemons, and Game of Thrones are pretty much always awesome. This will happen again. I owe myself some nights of relaxation, and I always pay my debts ;)

Time for a Change

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best at big decisions or big life changes. One would think that wouldn't be the case coming from a woman who regularly packs up her whole life and moves halfway across the country (and sometimes the world), but there you have it. 

At the same time, though, there's a kind of freedom and exhilaration that comes from big changes. Right now, I'm at a point in my life where there is very little tying me to any one spot. Whenever I feel restless, I can just pack up and move on. I may be small, and the world may be vast, but all that means is that there are so many more possibilities for my life than I can even comprehend.

Those possibilities and my choices have led me from a small Chicago suburb to New Orleans, Kigali, London, and a whole host of other cities. I have kissed a boy in front of Buckingham Palace, danced in the rain in Paris, laid flowers on Oscar Wilde's grave the morning of my 21st birthday, seen the sunset on a beach in Rwanda, and chatted with a devil outside a pirate absinthe bar in New Orleans. And now, I'll find new adventures, in Lexington, Kentucky.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit terrified. It's always a little frightening to step off into the unknown. But I also know that this is the right step. I'm ready for new people, new food, new sights. I'm ready to start a new layer of my story.

I would say starting over, but it's really not. The quiet, sensitive girl that I was growing up in the Chicagoland area is still there, as is the bubbly, loving woman I became in New Orleans, and the nomad self I embraced while living in London. My toughened, more assertive self from Oklahoma City will always exist. But now is my chance to add on a new layer. I don't know yet what Lexington will have to teach me, but I know that I cannot wait to find out.