The Bad Life Choices I Make While Playing Tetris

While playing Tetris at 12:30 last night, my tired, tired brain thought as I put one squiggly block on top of another, “That was a bad life choice.” and then it thought “What?” I suppose part of that bad life choice was playing Tetris at 12:30.

A reflection of the bad choices I make playing Tetris.

The reason I play Tetris so late at night is that it is simple. Sometimes simpler than Solitaire, which is hard to do. The rules are pretty much:
1. Stack differently shaped blocks that are virtually thrown at you on top of each other.
2. NEVER ever ever ever ever play Tetris in front of someone who knows how to play Tetris “correctly”.

If you play Tetris in front of someone who is good at Tetris, they will notice as soon as you stack any block “incorrectly”. Their fingers will start to itch and they will start to mutter “no no no no no no no no agh no no ugh no no”. After a while you must hand the game over to them, otherwise, their brains explode. Anyway. I am not good at Tetris.

Recently, I joined the Model United Nations club/class here. It’s a great experience so far. I got the job of Resolution Process Coordinator. More on that in another post. Last week after class a large group of us went to a local Ethiopian restaurant.

The mindset behind Ethiopian food seems to be “let’s take a whole bunch of stuff and boil it until it is mushy, and then serve it in little piles!” Yummy, yummy piles.  I highly recommend .

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention- You eat with your hands. (These piles served 4 people. Very filling.)

On another note, I finally got my Ottoman-Turkish-English Dictionary! This may not seem like a big deal to you, but, it was for me, so I’m posting it. Because it’s my blog. Receiving this 6 pounds of a big deal means I can now do my homework, among other things.

I’m trying to get some continuity in my posts, so the new segment is “Book of the Week”. These will not be books I have read. They will be books I have shelved. Believe me, I’m not going to read “The Culture of Condoms”, not now, not ever. Also, this segment may not be every week. But I will try.

Book of the Week

I held this book up while I was sorting with my coordinator, J, and said the title out loud. He was not looking at me at the time, so he did not see the book, and quickly became very confused. I straightened the matter out in a timely fashion.

Winter Captionified, 2010

 

My dad looks like Santa.

Another post that I have been struggling to edit for the past month. Interesting fact: If you put too many pictures up, it screws everything, layout-wise.

#1 As a lot of you know, my dad has been working at Starbucks on the side. He seems to be enjoying it there. Mom and I drove through and told the girl who takes orders we were just “stalking Santa”. Being Santa pays off: lots of tips. The guy in front of us put a $5 in the pot. Also, he’s the only one qualified to be Santa (aka, the only one with a naturally Santa-colored beard).

 

Don’t wear high-heels to a late night Christmas party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#2 Luckily, we didn’t care about appearances by the time the clock struck midnight. (Mostly because we had turned into pumpkins)

Find the pastry who is not in the Christmas spirit.

#3 Year after year I am impressed by my sister’s skill with the pastry bag. This year was a special treat, because she treated herself to her a man shaped gingerbread man form. It’s hard to feel the full thrill of destroying a human cookie when it is in fact, a bear.

Happy Woods.

#4 Happy Woods- Aren’t there 4 Woods? I think they are missing one in this picture, but I can’t remember who…

#5 We all had great fun at the double-L’s, who seem to have integrated an extra child, not to mention several stuffed animals.

I did a double-take.

#6 Scenic photo courtesy of Chaarli. Thanks, Chaarli!

#7 Also, we now know what Joe the Plumber has been up to:

<insert various political comments here>

The real question is, is he paying the trucking services for the ad space?

All in all, a very good winter. See you next time at: Winter Captionified, 2011.

Although chances are, you will never see a segment like this ever again.

Roommate, Naan and a Relative Clause

Lots has changed over the winter. I now have a roommate who is here more than three hours a day.

Funny thing is, we had actually met before we actually met. A few months ago, I reunited with a long-lost childhood friend I had lost contact with, while waiting for the bus to Phoenix. Roommate is the other girl that was at the shuttle stop at the time.

First impressions are important- I unwittingly had naan and a mango in our fridge, and she had a copy of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ” by Hooman Majd. So, yeah. She is neat in that she went home this weekend and went to the Phoenix version of Lee-Lee’s and got some amazing snack food. We had these as dessert tonight:

Also featured: Treppenwitz's pottery

For those of you who know about Biskrem from Turkey *cough*alginobanro*cough*, these are like that, but dime sized. Cookies that have chocolate injected into them. That is one vaccination I will not complain about.

On classes- I have a new Turkish instructor, fresh from Istanbul! Haha. She’s great, and is focusing a lot on grammar, which is relieving. I was getting anxious that I was losing it, since I couldn’t remember a lot of grammatical terminology from ninth grade. Gah! Should have saved my notes. Now excuse me while I go write a paragraph about Hasan Saltık in the two forms of the relative clause.

Happy Independence Day!

86 years ago today, Turkey was born. Due to intensive childhood conditioning, my mind has been programmed to go stand in rows in front of my school at 7:00 in the morning and listen to the history of the war, and a whole ton of poems recited. I might even read one myself. And then I’d get the rest of the day off. Unfortunately that is not the case. Instead of “celebrating” this way, I went and took a midterm in Ottoman, the very writing system the founders of the country expelled a year after independence. I don’t know if I could call that irony or not.

My brother started complaining that he was bored, and didn’t have anything to read, so I had to post something. Independence Day seemed a good enough excuse.

I’m coming home this weekend! After Ohm predicted that no one would come to my door to get the candy I bought because everyone would be partying, and the weather got really (or, relatively) cold before I could get any of my winter clothes down, I decided to come up during the weekend. Besides, I miss my dog.

And my family.

Since it’s been the last few weeks of October, and this is a college campus, Halloween has been on the agenda a lot. Unfortunately, even though there are so many people in scientif-icky  majors here, I have not heard one person mention dressing up as a mad scientist yet. Such a sad waste of a major. There are very few majors with such a conveniently built in Halloween costume.

Halloween is not celebrated in Middle Eastern countries, of course, but the department kind of got in the spirit.

We just assumed it meant "please, we need to get rid of all this delicious candy"

So conveniently located next to the room we watched our Turkish movie in.

Since discovering friends and buses, I’ve been getting a chance to discover a bit more of Tucson. With a friend from Turkish class I got the chance to visit a school here entirely run by Turks. That was interesting. The second languages offered there are Turkish and Spanish, and the entire math department is Turkish. I got to meet the token American science teacher. Haha.

Evidently, the teacher already submitted a picture of this to Engrish. Epic.

I was also introduced to Eegee’s, which is “the only real reason to live here”. I was slowly convinced. It’s kind of a more smooth icee thing, only so much better.

My tongue after half of a stawberry Eegee.

On a more unfortunate note: Do not attempt to explore the mall on a slow weekday. It is traumatic. I have not only re-discovered my hatred of malls, but, I hate this one more, which is kind hard to do. There is a Super Target though, which is quite nice. Not at all traumatic.

One of my coordinators has decided I should learn coordinator-ly things, so I am slowly learning, and getting to do things other than shelve books.

Anyway. This is what’s up over here. Can’t wait to see people this weekend. Hopefully I’ll have my very first Halloween post up soon!

A Busy Week, a New Job and Contentment

It’s been a busy week. Two weeks, actually. I have taken 4 midterms, seen my family and best friend for the first time in 6 weeks, and others for the first time in 9 weeks, finished my library training and worked my first shifts.

I completed my training at the library with a 40 book shelving test. Despite the whole having to tell which numbers are bigger than the other, and having to recite the alphabet over and over in my head, it’s a really mindless, stress relieving job. I worked for the first time on Thursday, and was quite content.

From the weekend:

We went to CostCo. Enough said.

He asked to take one home.

This is CostCo.

Also, Lowe’s… What are you thinking!?

... everyone knows Santa doesn't play golf!

On my radar this week:
On my way to a certain evening class I have on Wednesday, I have been running into ROTC training people. They are not using real weapons, which is kind of disappointing, because that would be cooler, but also relieving because I don’t want to take the long way over to my class.

The weapons might not be real, but I got a death glare after taking this picture.

I have a Jack O’Lantern! (Thanks, Mom):

This is why I love the department:

I went and watched a Turkish movie with a fellow student I’ve been assigned a project with… It was not bad. No one committed suicide (I know, weird…) and it was actually really Turkish, and not Westernized. I had the opportunity to share my dried apricots and Turkish Delight filled amazing chocolate with her. Thanks, home group! The package was amazing.

My day with the Dewey Decimal System, and other Occurrences.

Today I went in for my initial training as a shelver at the library. Cleo, a very nice lady who has been working here for 30 years now, was given the burden of training me, and I’m very glad she did, ’cause I had no idea where I was going to put all those books.

The plan was: I read the packet, I get to “play” with the wooden block books on this little book cart they had, and then arrange some flash cards, and then I was to take a quiz on the computer to ensure I would have %95 accuracy.

Well, I read the packet, and we pulled the little cart out with the wooden blocks on it, and she pointed at wooden blocks and explained all about the books and the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress, which is great, ’cause it’s a cool system, although a little bit too dependent on a shelver’s ability to distinguish with decimal number is bigger than the other, but even by the end of this little lesson I was not given the opportunity to even touch or rearrange a single one of those really cool wooden blocks.
I felt kind of cheated.

I had a nice surprise while sorting the flash cards… Half way through the first stack I realized they all had their number order written out in Turkish on the bottom of them. This makes sense since my direct supervisor is Turkish, but still unexpected. After arranging the first set I pointed this out to Cleo, and asked if they had any that were not numbered in Turkish, ’cause I felt like I was cheating, but I don’t think they did, ’cause she gave me another stack ordered in Turkish.

Anyway. I passed my test. Yay!

Other happenings this week:

The choirs here had their first performance of the year, and our director had a really cool tenor solo in the graduate choir.

The Near Eastern Studies department threw a brunch, and it we all had some good times eating Turkish food and watching the first year Turkish students learn a belly dance.

… and for the second time, I hung up on my brother when the opportunity to pet something small and furry arose:

Brother's last words on the phone: Oh no, you're totally right to hang up.

Invention and the Pet Peeve

The Mini Sandwich Thing

Ingredients:

A tin of the canned chicken your mom sent you

Whole Saltine crackers (NOT crumbs)

3 little packets of mayonnaise, stolen from that one restaurant

2 packets of mustard, kind of stolen from that other place

Salt, Peper

Instructions:

1. Open the can of chicken and get all the juice out of the way.

2. Put the chicken in a bowl, and squeeze in the packets of mayonnaise and mustard in one by one, and mash the combination up with a fork until it looks pretty beaten up.

3.  Scoop the mixture on to  the saltine crackers.

4. Garnish with whatever you have on hand:

Red pepper flakes (very good)

Another Saltine cracker (if you like crackers)

Thin slice of apple (surprisingly good, actually)

Bay leaf (do NOT eat the raw bay leaf. This is just so you’ll feel like you’re eating pretty food)

Ta-da! Serve on a plate with a beverage of your choice, the rest of the apple (if you used apple), and an episode of the Office (optional).

I really liked them with red pepper flakes.

I discovered what my true pet peeve is: When people move my laundry from the washer to the dryer the second it’s done, without waiting a minute for me to do it.

I usually just say “When people punch me in the face” or “Being burned at the stake” or “My brother” or something…

Things I’ve Seen -or- Why I Need to Carry a Real Camera with Me Everywhere

So, I was walking down the street with my dinner (a reuben sandwich. I blame House making me like those), and saw a teeny little baby hare. So I promptly hung up  on my brother, and took a picture. I couldn’t get a very good one though.

Can you see it? CAN YOU SEE IT?!

No brother’s feelings where hurt in the production of this photo.

He totally understands.

Anyway. I thought about a week ago that I had run out of things to take pictures of around campus, but it turns out that I was so very wrong.

I totally forgot that we had a game until I saw this:

Paradise Bakery has school spirit.

For Office fans:

It gets a laugh like, a quarter of the time.

I knew I’d be able to find one of these:

I wish there was a bike locked to this.

Very exciting week. Lots of pictures, lots of  listening to screaming people coming back from the football game (I tried to guess which of the people screaming were drunk and which people were just hyped), lots of cupcakes, and Glee! Don’t laugh.

It was exciting to have Treppenwitz and SuperWoman and Belâ over on Saturday. I don’t think I’ve had a more enjoyable weekend for a long time. Thanks to “Lenore”, sister, for the cupcakes. They were delicious! And I like the nickname, although the destiny of Poe’s girls were never much better than Shakespeare’s…

Because.

During the long weekend I was able to think about what I’m going to do with this blog, now that routine has settled in, and I’ve taken all the absurd pictures I can get, and shared all the blog worthy ones with you. I decided I needed an experiment.
I thought of trying out vegetarianism for a week, to see if I could do it just on campus food, ’cause I ran out of groceries, but that seemed too easy. I thought about trying out veganism, and I was all set to try it out, till just about 5 minutes ago.
I went to the little convenience store to get milk, because, as I said, I’ve run out of groceries. Because of the experiment was on my mind, I bought soy milk instead.
Have you ever noticed how really smooth and tasty it looks on commercials?
I’m not doing the experiment.

P.S- Sweet N’ Low doesn’t do much for it either.

Paraphernalia

I understand this:

I understand this:

Putting your baby's head on a wildcat. I didn't think that was legal.

I even understand this:

...to some extent

What I do not understand is this:

UA is trying to infiltrate my undergarments!

I refuse to buy this unless you provide matching toothpaste.

Why.

I’m still trying to decide what to think about this:

Metaphorically depicting our journey through college, or just merchandise?