Please welcome

Percival Pasquale Daubert.

A.k.a., Percy.

I got him yesterday. He seems to be adapting to his new home fairly well and has even taken up Maurice's old habit of chilling in the castle. He looks very different from Maurice, which is good — as a blue/purple fish he even coordinates well with his bowl. Who knew fish could be so fashionable?

Houston, we have a problem

Let's see if I remember anything from algebra/geometry/whatever math uses proofs:

--Sleeping in + 2 hour nap = not sleepy
--Not sleepy + procrastination = baking
--Baking + new cookie cutters - not enough counter space + creative use of washer and dryer = roll-out sugar cookies
--Roll-out sugar cookies + they look naked = frosting
--Frosting + 1.5 hours - 2 cookies bravely lost in combat - 1 cookie sampled by the baker = 50 frosted sugar cookies

Therefore:

Sleeping in = 50 frosted sugar cookies


Something tells me that my math is a little off, but in the twisted logic that is my brain, this makes complete sense. Ah, the joys of the semester's early weeks...plenty of time later to feel guilty about all the hours of possible productivity I've wasted.

But look how pretty!

Wednesday morning coffee

Not much has happened in my life since my last post—the bad day adventure chronicled actually continued, if you can believe it. Since I don't feel like reliving the moments spent sobbing on the highway in bumper-to-bumper traffic because I had missed my exit and was about to run of gas, I'll move on to bigger and better things. Like...finishing my note (relief) and the terrible, terrible weather, and lemon bars. Which I baked on Sunday and which Tom and I inhaled. They were delicious...so lemony and tart.

Next: angel food cake w/ berry sauce.

Pretty much the crappiest 24 hours I've had in a long time

If this comes across as whining, that's because it is. If you can complain to the internets it minimizes complaining in real life. This is actually true.

Things that happened
-woke up yesterday with sore throat, slight cough (sure signs of being sick)
-my fish died
-it was butt-freezing cold
-came home at 2 in the morning to discover that my hot water pipes had frozen in the kitchen
-My cable and internet are disabled, probably from the cold
-maintenance arrives at 4:30 to check it out — I have waited a long stinking time for them to show up
-maintenance informs me that my pipe has burst. He shuts off my hot water so I can't take a shower or wash my face without contracting frostbite.
-I get approximately 2 hours of sleep. The weather is such that every moron on the road drives approximately .007 miles per hour. I am exactly 1 minute late to my 8 o'clock class and the door is locked.
-I check Tom's flight status online. His flight into Detroit is delayed. His flight to South Bend will be leaving without him most likely, unless it is also delayed. The next flight is at noon.

Good things have happened too, but they aren't exactly counter-balancing the total suckage of the last day or so. Ugh. When it rains it pours — my bad days are always REALLY REALLY BAD days.

I write this from Lula's cafe while nursing hot chocolate, capped with a staggering froth of whipped cream. I have given up on this week.

Requiem for Maurice

Maurice has died. For the last day or so he had been really lethargic, lying on the bottom of his tank, with alternate bouts of spastic activity when I tried to prod him into action. I'm not sure what it was caused by — he had been relatively normal. My only conclusion is that during my prolonged absence he was so weak from hunger that he succumbed to an infection, and that is how he died. Today, I came home from school and he was dead.

I'm sorry, Maurice, that I left you for so long and didn't take good enough care of you. But you had a great life and you were a great pet while you lasted. Enjoy your time in fish heaven — I hope you have many castles to swim in and around.

I'm not sure if I'll get another fish, considering the difficult logistics of vacations and whatnot that I hadn't considered before. I did like having Maurice around though, so I guess we'll see.

The Curious Case of Maurice Murphy

I return home and Maurice, who ended up staying at my apartment (alone! for three weeks!) after all due to slight technical difficulties in fish transfer, is alive. Or is he? This Maurice is smaller and less flamboyant of tail than the Maurice I remember. Not to mention the characteristic white streak in this fin is gone.

Suspicious. I have a few theories. First, and most absurd, is that the maintenance staff noticed that he was dead and replaced him with a similar looking fish. Second, Maurice "thinned out" due to his lack of diet and company and his new appearance is such a result. Third, I'm losing it. This is highly possible.

Clearly, I was a better writer

Found this while going through our interminable boxes full of old crap. Punctuation and capitalization copied verbatim.

The bag full of rocks.

Once there was a little ghost who had a bag. but what was in it? Try to guess. how about a rock? close. how about rocks. Right.


I think I was probably about five or six when I wrote that. Gotta say it's better than anything I've written lately. What happened to that prodigy? How about law school. Right.

2008 recap

On second thought, let's not do this, because 2008 turned out to be a surprisingly disappointing year. Let's hear it for 2009! Actually, according to the Chinese zodiac 2009 is supposed to be a good year for me because it is the year of my sign (the Ox). On that note:

Goals for 2009 if I were an ox:
-plow an extra acre of field a day
-keep hooves clean
-be productive enough to stay skinny and therefore, less desirable as food

And now, real goals for 2009:
-stay happy
-stay healthy
-become a lean, mean, ambition driven machine. With plenty of room for squishy doggies, snuggles, and nights spent exercising my dancing queen muscles.

The last few weeks

Highlights, of course with commentary:

Christmas: incredibly low key, accompanied by one f.a.n.t.a.s.t.i.c. steak dinner. Holy toledo, that was good. We did not open Christmas presents on Christmas eve, as is usual in this family. Instead we waited for the NJ contingent to arrive on Christmas day and opened presents then. Some highlights: assorted tart pans, measuring cups (silicon collapsible AND porcelain DUCK!), lotions, clothes, and hopefully (when I get back), one very large TV.

Sister's Sweet Sixteen: Lucky ran away during the party. Tom found him. Twenty something sixteen year olds bopping along to club music in the basement and a DJ who also did digital sketches. She got a car. And she does not even have her learner's permit. I'll just leave this one at that. Oh, and she also got Rock Band and a PS3. Which is AWESOME and really fun. I like the singing because it is the easiest, clearly.

Family vacay: played untold hours of online Tetris and watched movies in the new, shiny, incredibly spacious home theatre. Did not get enough sleep.

New Year's Eve: family all left during the day. Spent a few hours cleaning up the whirlwind mess. Then collapsed and slept for a zillion hours straight.

And the last few days: some more low key stuff. Nothing to report. Which is exactly how I like it.