gone fishing

When life throws a curve ball* at you sometimes you just need to pull back and take a break, I need that little break from blogging right now ... but never fear - I'll be baaack. :-)


*How American am I with my baseball metaphores?

when it rains...

...it pours!

I went to the bank today with a friend of mine to help with him with his account and wanted to add me to his account so I could help with transfers over the summer when he goes home to the States.

So we walk up to the desk and he explains to the guy that he wants to add me to his account and the guy asks for my ID. When I hand it over he fills out a form. I leaned over when I noticed that he filled out my birthday as 29/06/2007 (the day my ID expires).

I couldn't help but point out that, it is in fact not my birthday, I am not negative years.

So I said, actually my birthday is Oct 27, 1981.

And I see him write down Oct 25, 1981.

So I politely correct him but he ignores me. Then just before leaving he said, Ok just to verify the information and repeats all that he's written on the form. When he gets to my birthday I said, actually it is the 27th, not the 25th. And he replies, right, the 25th, ok.

Shaking my head I said, sure, fine. I swear.... :-)

I went to the pharmacy yesterday because I have these weird red spots in an isolated patch on my shoulder, almost like 10 million spiders bit me or a random cluster of zits or something. Anyway not to get into too much icky detail I just never have skin problems like that so I thought I'd stop by a pharmacy and see what they thought. In the middle of the conversation I was instantly reminded of these recent conversations of Sam and Frog with a Blog. It went something like this:

Me: Hi, I just had a question for you. See I have these weird red bumps on my shoulder. (I show them).

Pharmacy Lady: Oh, yes that does look weird.

Me: I just never have skin problems and I couldn't figure out what it might be so I thought I'd see if you had a cream or something.

Pharmacy Lady: Well it must be insect bites because it itches.

Me: Um, actually it doesn't itch.

Pharmacy Lady: No, it does itch I can tell. Plus you've scrached it.

Me: No, not that I remember, I've had insect bites before that itched and this doesn't itch.

Pharmacy Lady: No, its a bug bite and it itches. I'll give you a cream to take care of the itch.

Me: It doesn't itch.

Pharmacy Lady: Ok, take this cream and put it on 3 times a day, it will take care of the itch.

Me under my breath: But it doesn't itch.

Pharmacy Lady: Ok, that will be 5E.

I caved, she was so convinced that I have a gazillion bug bites in an area the size of a silver dollar that I paid the 5 euros and hoped the cream would work. I can tell you now that with the cream, I still don't itch, surprise surprise.

tee hee

thesis writin'

Last year I signed up for my first year of Masters (M1) in English Lit here at the university. But between all the classes, homework and then working 2 jobs at 3 schools I managed to pass the classes but never wrote my thesis to pass the year.

So this year I signed up for M1 again, but this time no classes (since I already passed them) just my thesis to write. It took me so long to actually find a topic and a direction to head in, but now I've found it, I have my outline written out and the main part of my introduction written out. I have tons of ideas and things to say but having a hard time organizing my thoughts in a coherent manner so I'm reading and re-reading all my research.

My topic is on a contemporary American poet and her works and as I was leafing through one of her books of poetry something struck me. This not-well-known-outside-of-certain-circles author had published this book in my small and remote hometown (pop. 8,000) in Washington State! I never even knew we had a publishing company at home!

I took this as fate, I am meant to write about this! Now, enough procrastinating, gotta get back to work!

mother's day

I picked a flower for you :-)

Happy Mother's Day Mom!!!

We'll go back to this beach next time you come visit, can't wait!

Love you,

Karina

artsy-fartsy

The last few weeks I've felt that I've got some creative needs that need to be met! I used to do a lot more artwork, and crafty projects back in the day (was almost an Art Major in college!)

I bought a glass engraver a few years ago, its a great little tool that has paid for itself several times over. Its a little hard to get used to using because on glass it tends to skip and once you engrave glass you can't erase!

Friends of Mystery Guest is having their baby baptized in a few weeks and I thought it might be a nice gift. I always take pictures of my handmade gifts and am always tempted to post them but knowing that a lot of those people would read my blog I can't! But this time, ha ha, I can! So what do you think?

2eme tour

Today is the second round of voting for the French Presidental election. I again got to go in the little booth with Mr. Mystery Guest and pretend I was voting too. It is a cultural experience and something that is interesting to be a part of. Which reminds me of when I was voting for the US President almost 8 years ago and my Japanese roommate asked me out of curiousity what I thought about the election, to which my response was shooting coffee out my nose. The Japanese have a slight problem differentiating between "l" and "r" in English so you can imagine my surprise.

We find out in a couple of hours, at 8pm who will win. I have a sad feeling that out of the two evils it will be the greater than rather than the lesser than...

I found on another blog an article by Bill Maher that I again almost shot coffee out of my nose reading, I highly recommend you take a look but to whet your tastebuds here's a quote:

"We're not first. America isn't ranked anywhere near first in anything except military might and snotty billionaires. The country that is ranked No. 1 in healthcare, for example, is France. The World Health Organization ranks America at 37 in the world -- not two, or five -- 37, in between Costa Rica and Slovenia, which are both years away from discovering dentistry."

speederman 3

Last night I went go to see Speederman 3 with Mr. Mystery Guest and CJ. I had heard mixed reviews but overall enjoyed the cinematic expericence

:-)

I would say the first 2/3 of the movie were really fun and well done, you would even say it was a real spiderman zipping along but then it got cheezy and kitch and thats when I started having a good laugh - but at all the wrong parts.

I still think its worth seeing on the big screen just for all the action scenes.

la colline aux oiseaux

One beautiful park that most people don't take a chance to visit while in Caen is the Colline aux oiseaux (the bird hill if you will hehe). It is right next to our famous Mémorial and used to be a landfill, although you'd never guess that now.

Plus the park is so huge that even on a beautiful holiday like yesterday when everyone and their mother's uncle's dog wanted to go for a walk or picnic we still managed to find quiet shady areas where we could sniff the lilacs or feed the llamas :-)

Anyone know what these beautiful purple flowers are called? They were stunning hanging along the pathway...

I even got into the spirit with my little daisy ever so carefully tucked behind my ear by Mr. Mystery Guest :-)

Happy May Day!