Sunday Brunch Dessert

Ingredients:
1 large container of Yogurt, any flavor (not the small individual serving sizes)*
6 graham crackers*
cupcake wrappers
cupcake/muffin pan

Take the graham crackers and crumble them up in a bowl, and use a spoon to finely grind the crackers up. You can also a food processor to quickly grind them. Divide up the graham cracker up into the cupcake wrappers to give each treat about a 1/4 inch crust of graham cracker. Next spoon out the yogurt on top of the graham crackers. Put in the freezer for at least 2 hours. Serve frozen from the freezer. YUM!

Road Trip, Day 1

Here are some photos from our trip to New Mexico. Day 1:

 The sign says it all. 

Eating lunch at Cheaha State Park's Restaurant

Day 2 on our trip:

A path along the Natchez Trace Parkway

Ooo! Kicking that stone log hurts!

Justin asked me to marry him, I said Yes! (@Mississippi Petrified Forest)

First Coke Bottling Plant in Vicksburg, MS

Day 3:

Welcome to Texas!

 Dinosaur Valley State Park (see, everything is bigger in Texas)

Dinosaur footprint!

Of course, balance is everything (this was quite literally across the street from the park).

Day 4:

 Carlsbad Caverns, NM

That day we made it to Las Cruces, NM and celebrated Christmas at my mom's house. More photos coming from the rest of our trip.

Blogging News!

So I've been thinking for a while that I'm going to find a theme for my blog. Finally I've come up with an idea and I think I'm going to stick with it. My plan is to officially start the new blog theme at the beginning of the new year. My new blog theme is going to be Bargain Baking.

What I'm going to do is compare baking from scratch with baking from a box. I'll be doing cost, time, and taste analysis. Which means, if you live close by (IE, live with me, date me, work with me, or somehow within a 200 mile radius) you will be on the eating end of my blogging experiment. Now here's the fun part, dear readers... I'd like you to help me with the Bargain Baking challenge by submitting any recipes you'd like me to bake (I'll even give you part of the end results unless I burn them). Also, please feel free to submit any new titles for the blog. I'm kinda leaning towards "Bargain Baking" or "Food Fight", but I'm not terribly keen on either of those.

So look out for the bake off of 2010!

-A

A Thanksgiving Moment

I went to Justin's mom's house for Thanksgiving this year. It was my first ever visit to Walterboro, SC and I was pretty excited. I was looking forward to all the spectacular "redneck" stuff Justin promised me Walterboro would bring. He showed me around the great little area of Hendersonville, SC and pointed out all his haunts from when he was a kid. I looked forward to his mom dragging out the baby books so I could ooh and aww over Justin's baby photo's. I even expected there to be some exercising of our 2nd amendment rights (and BTW, did you buy a gun on friday or saturday? B/C in SC guns were tax free).

I DID NOT expect to share my Thanksgiving dinner with the stinkbugs however!!!

There I was sitting at the dinner table enjoying my turkey dinner and headed down the road to a food coma, when out of the corner of my eye I see this gray insect crawling along the table cloth below my mounds of food on my plate!!! I freaked out only a little bit... ok, I really screamed and shoved my chair back (into the china cabinet) trying to get away from the little freak. Once I realized the stink bug had me cornered (because I could push my chair that far), I got out of there and ran into the living room. and proceeded to giggle furiously at my hysterical overreaction to this little bug. Eventually everyone (myself, mainly) calmed back down after the stink bug was removed from the premises, and we proceeded to finish dinner. Later Justin's brother's fiance thanked me for the bit of excitement and distraction from talking about her wedding details. All in all, totally a Turkey Day worth remembering! Let's hope next year it's just guns on Thanksgiving, not bugs!

Thankful Wednesday

Today has shown me:

1) I'm thankful for indoor plumbing. The water got turned off at work. I definitly take indoor plumbing for granted.

2) The internet. It is also going to be turned off at work (at least to some degree) today.

3) My education. You can't take it away from me, hah!

Have a great, and thankful, thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving

During the past week, I feel like I've hit a brick wall emotionally and financially while going 60 mph.  I'm not one to be a pessimist, and even in times of negativity or challange, I try to find the positive and bright side to things.  So I think these challanges occurred the week before thanksgiving, and right before the kickoff to the holiday season to remind me of how lucky I am and how able I am to be in control of the situation, instead of the situation controlling me. So here's my thankful list:

1. I'm thankful for my job. It enables me to maintain the feeling of being able to control my situation.

2. I'm thankful I have a roof over my head. It's more than a lot of people have this year.

3. I'm thankful for my optimism, intelligence, and education. I'm glad life presents interesting challanges to me to maintain those qualities.

4. Above all, I'm thankful for my life, and the lives of those around me.

What irks me... every now and then

Ok, so for many people who know me, I generally let a lot of stuff people say slide.  I'll admit it, we're all culpable of saying things when we really haven't thought out the implications. One of those things that repeatably gets said around me involves that fact that I look young for my age. I'll admit it, I don't try hard to look older, but I also don't try to look younger than I really am. What are those remarks? They are the unintentional ageist remarks young adults (22+) quite often hear.

I know I'm not alone in hearing "oh, I thought you were a student" or "you really don't look old enough to ___" or the best "really, you're 25?!! Gosh, I thought you were ____ (usually an age in the teens)". I mean, if I were to reverse those comments to be a comment on how old the person looked, it would A) be insulting, and B) imply that I thought that person wasn't equipped to be doing the job or activity they're doing due to their age.

For awhile (like most of my life), I've let these kinds of comments slide. Most women in my family do look younger than they really are and I will consider myself very lucky one day when I'm 45 and feeling like an old hag and someone says I look like I'm in my 20s. But what really set me off onto a path of thinking about ageist comments was an experience someone I knew had at a professional conference.  There's this friend of mine that I encouraged to get presentation experience and she submitted a proposal, which got accepted. She worked long and hard on it, and did a fabulous job. What really irked me was when we were reviewing her presentation feedback forms and some of the comments read "what a great job she did, considering how young she is".  I was flabbergasted!  Age shouldn't have anything to do with how qualified someone is.

Grr it really makes me mad.

Update

Today I was taken away and locked up! Thank you all for helping raise bail for me. Today I raised $80, 10% of my personal goal for Jerry's Kids. That is enough to pay for 1 minute of research, or 3 flu shots (with come change left over). Thank you everyone! If you forgot and still want to donate, my website is still open to securely take money.

Roll Tide!

Ok, I'll admit it. I LOVE FOOTBALL. College football to be precise. Which leads to faux debates with J about college vs. professional. I like the screwups and the bad seasons. I think the skill and unseasoned-ness of college students is awesome. It probably comes from having this thing for wanting to work with college students and see them be successful. Anywho, I know I'm right that college football "rawks!", so to speak.

That's not excatly the point of this post. The point is, I'm going to 'Bama this weekend to watch the USC beat Alabama (I know, in my dreams, cuz 'Bama is having a great season so far). So I'm going to watch the game in Alabama... on TV. Yup, I'll be watching from Birmingham, but I'll be cheering for the Gamecocks. Go Gamecocks!

So weeks ago, I signed up to help raise money for Jerry's Kids, a part of the MDA, or the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I have a week and a half before I'm thrown in Jail. Here's what you can do: go to https://www.joinmda.org/aiken2009/annev and donate. It's that easy. Please consider giving a little (or a lot). So you know how much of a difference just a little bit of money makes, I've included a chart of what donations go towards:
* $30 - Flu Shot
* $82 -1 Minute of Research
* $100 - Support Group Session
* $800 - Child to MDA Summer Camp
* $2,000 - Assist with Wheelchair or Leg Braces
* $4,000 - Cabin of 5 friends at MDA Summer Camp

If just 3 people donate $10, together they can help pay for a flu shot and help these kids stay healthy. My Goal is to send a child to the MDA Summer Camp, so I'm trying to get to $800 dollars.

Fall Break Thursday

I love students. But sometimes, a small break from them like fall break can be rejuvinating and refreshing. I'm already off to a good start this morning and I'm excited to get more stuff done, like grading final exams. (If you're one of my students, the good news if I'm half way through grading your finals. The bad news is I'm not posting grades until Monday).

Fall is starting to be kinda nice here in South Carolina, but unfortunatly it's just not that good of a season here. The leaves kinda change, but they also do that when we have drought conditions. No, the season I really, really like in the South is Spring. There's so many beautiful things blooming at that time, that it catches your breath with the beauty surrounding you. Sorry Southern Fall, you lose to Southen Spring.

USCA's Small Obsession

So I came back to campus today and found this gem in my email from a faculty member on campus:

Yes, that is an Albino Squirrel. Like anything albino, apparently these are pretty rare. I guess something must be in the water because this is the second Albino Squirrel to take up residence on the campus. Our last Albino Squirrel died last spring. and the death was verified, as someone found the dead animal on the ground.

Why I can't do dinner and a movie

So I had dinner tonight with a friend I haven't seen in a couple of months because we've both been so busy. Now is when I realize, yet again, how talkative I am. We met for dinner at 7:30 (YAY IHOP), and hung out till about 9:30 just talking and catching up. It was a good catch up and I hope we don't wait so long before hanging out again. I think if I go another couple of months before we have a big catch up event, we'll end up needing to have a semi-slumber party for all the talking we'll do. Ah, new friends are wonderful and it's great to find like minded people in a small town.

In the last week...

Oh, shoot, I skipped a week! Why, because I'm lazy and prime time TV shows have started up. Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Bones, Fringe, House, Project Runway, HIMYM, and Big Bang Theory all require a serious amount of time and dedication to watch. I mean, it's not just enough to watch them during the show time (which I miss half the time due to silly things like performances of the Best Little W****House in Texas), but these shows require serious, I mean SERIOUS commitment. I must find an appropriate blog and analysis of every show after I watch them to find the hidden, more deeper meaning behind them. Oh yeah, I also moved... :) I love moving and I have a cute little place with my sister and we have a bit of a yard, so let the cookouts begin. Anyhow... now I'm back to blogging.

Now that my big adventure is done for the season, I'm going to take a small break from acting and give writing a chance. I've been given the chance to write a couple of short chapters in a tutor training handbook and I'm really excited to get started. Hopefully, this will turn out better than some of my grad school and undergrad papers because I actually want to write these chapters. I'm going to start thinking of a timeline for this project and hopefully have an idea by the end of the weekend of when I'm going to get what done.

Also, the book I can't put down (but just happens to be kind of lost cause I haven't unpacked it from the move):

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver- I have no clue why I like this book so much other than the ideas speak to me, it's plainly written so it's a quick read while talking about new concepts, and it's an interesting concept. The book is about the Kingsolver's family moving from the desert to Virginia so they can be localvores who don't tax the land. I like the fact that there's a lot of practical deep wisdom there and it's presented in many different formats and viewpoints. I hope this might be a top contender in our reading selection.

Two for Friday

I found this on my learning professionals listserv and thought it'd be really great for students out there to see to understand the gist of learning styles. Also, I'm attaching a link to the Learning Styles 60-second podcast I did this past spring.



Podcast: Learning Styles Info and Activities

Book Reviews

I'm on this reading committee and we're in charge of selecting a book for our yearly first year reading experience. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, in the world of Higher Ed, the answer is always "it depends". Why, do you ask? Because we've been meeting since LAST September to select a book for 2010-2011, and still haven't found one and we were supposed to be done last spring. We do have a good excuse... the theme we choose is a really hard one, and we're a bunch of hard-headed stubborn folk who won't change our theme. So we're still reading. Here is my year in review recap of the book's we've read:

Theme: Environmental Responsibility

Book: The World Without Us
Awesome book and it really helps you think about what you're actions right now, or the actions of your grandfather, mean and how long it would take for those actions to reverse. Why we didn't choose this book even though a lot of us liked it: The language was a bit difficult and we felt it would be over the heads of most (not all) of our school's freshmen. It would, however, be a good companion to whatever we choose. Definitely a must read if you're interested in your personal environmental impact. I'd highly recommend the chapter on cities, buildings, and houses, and the chapter on plastics.

Book: In Defense of Food
Stretching our theme quite a bit to include human health and nature, we all read this book and really liked it. I personally, did not like it. I felt it was a bit too much whack science, but others in the group disagreed. While we really like the book, it was a bit too much outside of the environmental responsibility theme and would require too much stretching to connect the dots for the freshmen. Our student member of the committee also felt it was too boring.

Book: Unbowed
This book is also great and discusses one woman's effort to try and re-plant vegetation in her native country that's been over developed by humans. It's really good and demonstrates what someone can do even if they come from the lowest of poverty levels. However, we didn't choose the book because it catered a bit more to the female point of view, the narrative takes place in Africa and wouldn't be as relevant to our incoming students. Also, it didn't fit just right with our theme because it focused more on the vegetation aspect of environmental responsibility and on the aspect of social injustice.

More book reviews to come (maybe next week?).

Whoops, It's Thursday!

I didn't mean to go so long without posting, and I'm sorry. So here goes what I've been doing this week instead of posting...

Tuesday Night-
I went to a very cool event that was called Let Your Children Tell. It was a documentary play about 4 children's lives during the Holocaust. I really enjoyed it, though I felt the acting could have been more sincere. I would say the best (or really, in this case, the worst) part of the play, the part that really got across the message that the holocaust was a really crummy and awful part of human history was when the actors were telling the story of arriving at a concentration camp and the families being separated. The crying and screaming of the children being ripped from their mothers' arms was just terrible. I really have no words to discribe how it gave such a horrifying and sad voice to those who were oppressed and murdered during the holocaust. Overall, it really was a good play, it was based on survivors of the holocaust stories, and it did achieve the feelings it was supposed to achieve. I left wanting to cry my eyes out for all the people who were senselessly, brutally murdered during the holocaust. And I was glad I wanted to cry because I know there's still humanity left in us if we all want to cry over our tragedies and failings as a human race.

Wednesday Night-
I had a really nasty headache all day long that was mostly just a dull ache and worsened after I got off of work. and really, I had nothing to write about that wouldn't be whining, and I feel stupid whining online.

Tonight-
I'm back on for rehearsal at the playhouse! woot! 6 more shows and we will be done. I'm sad I'm missing the season premeires of some really good shows and hope that they will still be online for veiwing or that someone is kind and they DVR it for me.  

Have a great rest of your week.

Project Runway

Ok, I only have a tinny tiny itsy bitsy obsession with Project Runway... NOT! It's back on, I've missed it during the year long (feels like 10 years, which in the model world, is like dog years! -thanks heidi!) hiatus. I'm so glad lifetime has picked it up because now when I've missed an episode because of BLWIT rehearsal or performances, I can still catch it online a few days or weeks later. YAY Lifetime! (I never thought I'd say that). and with that, I leave you with the link to the latest episode. Cheers!

Project Runway, Episode 4, Season 6

Too much time...

Whenever I think I may have too much time on my hands (which is hardly ever), I just have to go to YouTube and I can quickly find videos similar to this:

Appreciation

Hey Katie,
I'm sure it's eleven o'clock at night or something wicked late like that and you've just gotten off of work. But guess what? You're an awesome sister and I know you needed to hear that. I know I don't say it often enough, and I'm pretty sure I fight with you more than I tell you that you're super cool. Thank for being a great sister. This week you've made sure I had food (I'm too much like a stereotypical bachelorette), that we have someplace to live at the end of the month, started the ball rolling on the little move things, and reminded me of the stupid mundane things I have to do between 10am and 4pm like calling the apartment management and asking them to come unclog my toilet. You've even let me use your toilet (not that there's a choice there) and locked the cat in your bathroom so he doesn't wake me in the middle of the night with his howling and pawing. Without you this week, I'm pretty sure I would have had a few crying fits over being tired from crazy long days of work and rehearsal. I'm sure I would have screamed a few times to just get my frustration out and weirded out our neighbors. So, thank you, for saving me from myself. YOU ROCK!
Love,
Me