The (abrupt-ish) end of this blog

I suppose all blogs feel like they end abruptly when their time comes. I won't be blogging anymore. I enjoyed writing each and every post here at 1pp7b and wish i could have written more of them and expanded on my blog topics. But i can't do everything..and rather than write sporadically I would rather not keep a blog. Rest assured I will continue to express myself by other means, prepare delicious food, and stay in contact, just not by blogging, tumbling, or tweeting. Many thanks to everyone who followed my posts over the last year, I really appreciate you! xoxo katy

Beans, beans, the wonderful froot

       Oh my g00dness.  Beans.  Deelishous beans.  My bean kingdom was just massively expanded, so I'd call my self a legumatic at the moment--craaaazy about beans, but not just any beans.  My parents heard about this awesome grower of heirloom beans, perhaps on the "Splendid Table"? and they loooved the first ones they got and subsequently they sent me 3 varieties, sweet thayngs! First ones I tried (easy soak, boil, simmer,eat process :D) were the Good Mother Stallards.  Sure the texture was just like other beans, but the flavor was just insane, totally made me question if kidney or black beans taste like anything at all!  I cooked the whole pound! And ate them every day for like 12 days.  Next up:  I'm soakin the Rio Zapes (chocolate-coffee toned pinto!) or Borlottis (velvety, good w/ pasta, a member of the cranberry bean family!) --or better yet, a 1/2 lb. of each!

 Here is a complete lineup of all of Rancho Gordo's bean offerings.

Good Mother Stallards "exude the most perfect pot liquor"

Not only do they taste out of this world, but they just look like gems!!

crunch time

Ahhh, crunch time.  The end of the semester brings with it loads of weighty assignments and the mind aches from just thinking about the pile of things to do.  But I just am thinking positive and keeping vigilant about staving off end-of-the-world-as-schoolwork-knows-it thoughts.  Having work to do in my lab actually helps, because it goes along with the theory (still unproven!) that schoolwork isn't the center of the universe.  And during crunch time all the good in the world is good is even better!  Drinking good tea, eating tasty food, waking up after a nap, breaking a sweat on a morning jog, letting sunlight hit your skin--the spare moments I take to do other things seem extra awesome and help remind me that there's a world of things out there--and I don't have to wait to be all through with the semester to enjoy it. The lovely College Station spring temperatures and breezes are also really pleasant on my morning and evening commutes home.

SUPER good!  Gourmet PB&J--made with homemade raspberry grand marnier jam and slivered bananas

macaroons

happy friday the 13th--lotsa schoolwork here to do at my desk and in my lab today.  best to get a bunch done & have a great sense of accomplishment heading into the wknd! I think i'll go get a cold beer at the bar by school after a swim/run at the Rec.

My standing army.

here is a deelishous thing to think about: vegan chocolate-bottomed macaroons, recipe courtesy of the glorious ppk.  All of my oceanography friends loooved them.  and they only took 1 easy hour to make from start to final cookie in ur hand.  next up, I will make the Cocoa-on-cocoa variaysh!

I'm rich!  A whole pile of gold!

I  l00ve Isa's recipe comment that, "These are irresistibly adorable, nugget sized morsels that look like they could double as the currency of magical forest creatures." soooo true! and I so wanna live in that forest!!

have a great weekend!! I have gotten several sweet, loving messages from Wilmington friends the past couple weeks (2 in the last day, alone!) and can't wait to do some solid correspondence of my own on my fav self-drawn whale shark stationery!  and probably do a bit of baking, finish my novel, "1Q84"!, and take walks in my peaceful neighborhood :D

 xoxoox

WEEKEND UPDATE:  I did finish IQ84, and it was a great ending!! very satisfying!!  Haruki was very nice to do that, to leave me feeling warm and fuzzy about Tengo and Aomame after 921 pages.  And I took nice walks and i also spent lovely hours in my happy kitchen, whipping up a small batches of peanutbutter pretzel rice krispie treats, cornbread, brownies, and chocolate chip muffins!

Why are we here?

One of my professor took me by surprise today and wrote, "Why are we here?" on the whiteboard at the start of class.  The discussion that insued was very refreshing.  We talked about what our purposes are in Data Methods Graph Representation are specifically but also got into one of Steve (the professor) 's favorite things--Prelims.  I think he might have just come from a prelim, I'm not sure.  Prelims are when your PhD committee members assess that you have enough knowledge of what you are doing and what has been done in your particular realm to be in the PhD program.  They do this by asking you probing questions.

Steve drew a dot on the whiteboard at this point and labeled it 'You.'  The whiteboard, he explained, was knowldege.  And then he drew a little cross marks to indicate the questions that different professors would ask you in order to draw a shape around the 'You' according to the questions you are able to synthesize using your 'oceanographic suitcase' of knowledge and 'toolbox' of analyzing/thinking.  He said its such a cool moment in the room when a candidate connects things from different questions, filling in more area of that blob around the dot 'You.' 

I loved having this pep talk--it made me really want to commit to reading more literature.  There are so many very worthwhile papers out there, so many even in just the last 10 years that I want to read and understand!  I can, for instance, read a journal article of something related to analytical techniques, methane budgets, air-sea fluxes.  I learn a lot from reading journal articles--mostly from Marine Chemistry, J. Geophysical Research, Science, Nature, American Geophysical Union, for papers I am writing or trace gas homework I am doing that I know it would be so worth it to read some on my own with no particular assignment I have to do associated with it.  I don't have much down time, but I can make room for this I hope!

Love my Sealife vegetable calendar soooo much!  This beet seahorse is a daily cheerleader at the moment.

Easter Island

Rapa Nui a.k.a. Easter Island was reached by the first Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722.  The first footage of Rapa Nui I saw was from surf documentaries I watched with my brother, as there are huuuge waves off the coast of the island.  But another doc, called "180 degrees South" that I caught on Netflix brought another aspect of the island into my consciousness.

Moai statues assembled on Rapa Nui

Among the things that led to the downfall of the original Rapa Nui civilization was environmental degradation, specifically, deforestation.  In order to erect all their huge symbolic statues, they cut down their forests in an unsustainable manner and after centuries their forests were disappearing and things like fishing fell by the wayside because they were strapped for lumber.  Other things like  Europeans, disease, and slave raiders helped erode their civilization, but this is still a perfect microcosmic example of what we humans today are doing now on a global level--ignorantly using up our world's precious resources of air, water, and forests.

You'd think, oh, didn't the Rapa Nuians see that they were diminishing their forests--why didn't they just slow down?  And we too, as a global populous, are cutting down  majestic tracks of forest to make way for Agribusiness, erecting factories to burn carbon that's hundreds of millions of years old, and digging up mountains to get more of it.  Sure, I myself am not doing these things, but the 20 year old girls in ancient Rapa Nui  probably weren't cutting down the trees themselves either.  Today, and every day, we all need to take responsibility and engage in conversations about how important our environment is to us with each other and with our national and world leaders.

We don't need to shame each other into changing our ways--it's obviously a "natural" handicap of our species to do this type of thing since it is universal across ancient and present-day civilizations of all sizes and from diverse geographic areas.  The first step is admitting we have a problem that we can fix.  That was done decades ago, but we have not been following a plan!  This generation needs to accept  that we, as well as all the generations before us, suffer from short-sightedness and err on the side of convenience.  We can work out solutions that make us collectively behave less selfishly and more intelligently.  We need to get the whole world to believe that we can become much more efficient, much more responsible, and much less dependent on corrupting the environment we depend on.

Not my father's cornbread

I made some deeelishous cornbread Friday morning.  The unusual thing about it was that it turned out blue. Guess that's what happens when you use Blue Cornmeal. :D

The blue corn has kinda a dull, violet-blue hue really.  Reminds me of the color of the Crayola "cornflower" crayon actually.  I don't know why we don't see more of blue corn--the only place it is mainstream is in blue corn chips, which have recently been adopted by Lays I believe, though they started out exclusively in the natural foods market I'm pretty sure.  I've also eaten natural blue corn taco shells, but that's the only blue corn I've ever experienced.  Blue is just more fun.  Sorry, yellow.  Red chips you see in restaurants are just too red--I would hazard a guess that it is just dyed yellow corn.

I followed Arrowhead Mills' recipe, found on their bag of their blue cornmeal, and it turned out great--moist, deelishous, slightly sweet.  I tweaked it a tad by curdling the nondairy milk with a dash of vinegar to give it that buttermilk edge. My friend Morgan was over to enjoy a couple of pieces but I'm pretty sure I will polish the rest of the pan off before the weekend is out--I just can't get enough. 

I topped my cornbread with coconut cream, blue agave, and sea salt.  I made the coconut cream by pouring a can of coconut milk into a shallow container and letting it thicken up in the fridge--maggggical.

My dad makes the meanest cornbread I've ever tasted, and I aim to make his recipe, which is Mollie Katzen's from the Moosewood cookbook, with agave and a vegan egg* someday soon. Growing up, he always carved a big 'S' for Sparrow onto the top of the cornbread just before putting it into the oven and I always made sure to remind him of it.  

*Ener-G egg replacer worked splendidly in this blue cornbread recipe, which called for one egg or egg replacer.  To make an Ener-G egg, you just buy a box of it from your supermarket's baking or natural foods aisle and mix up 1.5 tsp of the patented potato starch and tapioca starch mixture with 2 Tbs. warm water and voila, a perfect no-cruelty, no-cage, no-fence, non-animal agriculture dependent 'egg' for all-purpose baking.

Class field trip

On Monday our labgroup took a lil field trip to "Washington on the Brazos," the birthplace of Texas.  John comes here a lot with his family and he knew it would be a nice place to show the prospective grad student visiting our lab from Irvine, CA this week.  Totally fine by me to peace outta school together early in the afternoon!!  There were some nice paths and lotsa wildflowers to inhale with my eyes and nostrils.  I very much wish I could bottle up the scent of a Texa wildflower field in spring.  Along the path, I came across a long-haired black caterpillar while we were there and we became fast friends.

Eric took some great photos with his phone that I would love to share..

John, me, and Mengran with our lovely prospective student, Mihai, next to me.

Texas paintbrush and bluebonnets

The kids:  Eric, Me, Mihai, and Mengran  w/ the bluebonnets and paintbrushes

Afterwards John wanted to treat Mihai to Texas BBQ, which Mihai incidentally has on his bucket list, or at least his "things to do while I'm visiting this grad school in Texas" list.  John was kinda nervous that I wouldn't be able to eat anything at Rudy's BBQ, but I was not.  Sure enough the dead-animals-made-TX-tasty haven was plenty vegan friendly--not that they would want to know that!  The staff shirts at Rudy's say, "I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain just to eat vegetables!"  Razor sharp logic, indeed.  Anyhow, the smoked baked potato and 3 bean (kidney, garbanzo, and green) salad was very good.  Odd that they wouldn't accept out of state licenses for a beer though and it made me glad that no where else in town that I have encountered is unkindly to the Old North State.

xoxo
katy

texas wildflowers viewed on bicycle

Hey there!

My friends Jan and Fenix took excellent photos while we were bicycling last Saturday to check out all the wildflowers that are blooming here.  We rode from Snook, TX to Lake Somerville (about a 50 mile loop) and did some geocaching around the lakeside with Jan's iPhone.
http://www.kodovsky.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=8941

A few of my photos from the day:

Wildflowers!

Geocache treasures

Cows!  My first longhorn sighting.

Lake Somerville..pretty nice lake!!  About 30 miles around the whole thing I think

The Sea of Rural Southeastern Texas

And here are all of my pics on a Picasa web album, if you can check those out.

https://plus.google.com/photos/114314284006602717386/albums/5726239024150230897?authkey=CLn9l7D_2OKbaQ

I really enjoyed the long ride and riding through the country--fresh air and cows! It was getting pretty hot by the end of our 8 hour journey though and we faced some really rocky/sandy rural roads on the way home.  I came home and ate about a pound of frozen fruit--mangos, pineapples, and peaches--laying under the ceiling fan, which is my go-to cool off and recover stategy.

xoxo
katy

HOTPOT

PIE

I decided to take after my father and take up the art, the craft, the joy! of making pies

so I got the best pie book ever, hot off the press



My 5 friends that came to my first pie&coffee event!



ohmygah, pie!  it came out great.



for my first pie I made the appleberry w/ the olive oil double crust..



Served a la mode w/ SO Delicious brand vanilla ice cream 



served with deelishous Chemex coffee

I guess i did a pretty swell job as hostess b/c my friends stayed for like 7 hrs! We played games and did a 500 pc. jigsaw puzzle. What was it like the first time hosting a get together at your own place? If you were like me, you had to prepare a fair bit..get dessert plates and teacups, a houseplant, extra chairs..

Freebird!

Bored of the same old-same old, last friday I shook things up. I dropped my school stuff off at home, along with my inhibitions, and caught a bus back to the campus side of town. Fellow yogis are probs familiar with the mental construct of leaving all your thoughts in something like a basket, outside the door, where you can pick it up after class if you like. Riding along without all my school stuff, and all my school thoughts, I felt liberated, just as I knew thought I would.

I wanted to eat at Freebirds for dinner.

I ordered a Monster-sized veg burrito.

(Its literally called the Monster size, the 3rd biggest, between Freebird and SuperMonster)

And it was awesome.

Next I went to the really lovely starbucks just a couple blocks down. This downtown College Station district called Northgate is pretty cool, kinda historic looking, and quasi-Western, as some buildings are old Saloons.

The barista was super cute! I had kinda approached the counter so his coworker cut off mid-conversation, and I was like, Oh no, I dont know what I want yet. But he was like, Oh no, thats my job, I can suggest the best things..like the Chidazzle. I was is that new? haha Turns out he made it up and I totallly loved it, it was A hot Chai with raspberry and a touch of vanilla. Totally rocked! Mostly because it was not on the menu and because Bo (the baristas name) was just genuinely really nice. We exchanged numbers when he kicked me and my iPad (i watched a movie on netflix) out at 11pm.

And I'm doing the same free-as-a-birding tonight! Except I am starting off at starbucks tonight, with a hot mug of coffee. The chill of autumn is finally extending to Texas. I feel cozy though, wearing my blue and oatmeal cardigans and my favorite tawny umber-coloured scarf from Avoca, which aunt terry and uncle nat brought me. Ya, I came directly from yoga class tonight, but having my school stuff with me is just fine, better than fine actually; I kinda want to read some of the journal articles that I have with me. Its all about the state of mind. I feel like I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing in this moment.

Tonight in yoga, when I heard, "take a few minutes to center yourself," instead of centering on the moment (by sliding my basket of thoughts outside) I observed that my mind began opening my basket instead, trying to sit each thought right-side up, if you will. But I caught myself, I just slid out of my ego for class, which is sooo refreshing.

Know what else directs my attention outta my cranium? FRIENDS. (yes, the tv show, too, 10pm central time nickelodeon :p) I have been making new acquaintances like crazy lately, which I'm really happy about, but I'm hoping to catch up with my the friends I think about all the time in NC this weekend..I've already left about 10 voicemails for friends whose voices I cant wait to hear.

A difficult yoga practice followed by lemon love

Om

       Ohmygah, so fitting that after I mentioned to not worry about feeling squished on the 7 billion person planet (space is not going to be so much of an issue; resources on the other hand...) Yoga Beatz, the yoga flows to music w/ words, class that I like at the Rec tonight was too popular!  Whenever a yoga practice is crowded, I remind myself that it will just feel extra-Indian today.  But it was more difficult tonight for me to not be bothered by swan diving arm collisions, for whatever reason.  I admittedly was not feeling enough compassion for the boy who came in late and rolled out a mat next to me.  I can see should have felt chosen, as a kind looking person, rather than singled out among to be squished out of the 50 other kids in the room.  The one bright spot is that I didn't outwardly express any space discomfort with body language, and kept it to myself (along with my limbs, after one too many swan dives).

When I practice yoga in my apt., I often utilize this super cool cartoon flipbook.  Thanks Aunt Terry!

         After a catching the new Modern Family (guest character named Katy on tonight's episode!) on an elliptical, I hit the shower and biked home.  I always have a snack before leaving, and this week I've been enjoying Lemon LovU bars. What?  You don't know those?  They're like these...

Mmmm Luna bars in my fav flava

              Except homemade!  I made the bar with brown rice krispie cereal, hemp protein powder, lemon juice, fresh ginger, brown rice syrup, and guar gum and frosted them with a lemon juice-coconut butter icing.

Whole pan of awesomeness, cut into bars and wrapped in foil.

Like Luna Bars, LovU Bars have the idiosyncrasy of being eaten icing side-down.

I do love a beet.  And Mom, of course. 

Scooch over..we've reached 7 billion!

       My blog title officially (theoretically) became justified on Monday, when the world's population crossed the 7 billion threshold!  "0.142857.." is the decimal version of the 1/7 fraction and "ppb" is just parts-per notation, like  Hey the amount of chlorophyll-A in this sample is 16.1 ppm would be 16.1 parts chlorophyll for 1 million parts water.  And so I am (and you are) just 1 person in 7+ billion on the Earth today.  Feeling claustrophobic?  Don't.  Did you know 7 billion people standing shoulder-to-shoulder would only occupy the area of the city of Los Angeles?  True story.  Other true stories:  Cool special edition 7 billion series from NPR.

       What else happened Monday?  Well, it was Halloween.  Americans carved pumpkins.

I'm actually gonna eat this pumpkin so the  skull is just an "effect."

     People watched scary movies.  I found a real gem, "Vampiros en la Habana."

A fav scene: The vampire group celebrates with a round of O+ (my blood type).

       And chocolate was eaten

Best brownies eva!

    Katy's new fav brownies

-1/2 C. dates

-1/2 C. raw walnuts

-scant 1/4 C. cocoa powder

-1.5 T coconut oil

Blend the ingredients together in a food processor until the mix resembles potting soil.  Then press into a small baking dish and freeze for 1 hour.  Cut into squares, eat and let euphoria wash over you. Recipe makes about 3 brownies.

squash and costumes..yes its definitley halloween

Yesterday I was so stoked to see a small collection of kabocha squash at brazos natural foods. It's red-orange flesh is rendered sweet and amaaaazing upon simple oven-roasting. 

score!  kabocha

 I think the alluring thing about the bigger squash is that it takes some Umph (and a good heavy knife) to prepare them for baking, which is in turn, really easy.  Having squash around really makes me happy--they totally lend a nice presence--they make me think of being at the State Fair with my family, where I'd see like 800 lb pumpkins alongside really pretty Best in Show squash and also of the Berenstein Bears story in which Papa Bear reads books to the pumpkin he's growing out in the punkin patch.

I placed it on my bar to sit by its squash cousin..a cute lil pie pumpkin that I also have plans to bake this week.

Plusss, these squashes make me think of carving pumpkins with my Dad in our garage.I would draw out a design and he would operate the knife.  I remember feeling impatience on at least one occasion as I got older because I didn't get to actually carve it myself, but I am so glad I never had to skip trick-or-treating because I was in the ER.  And I was always proud of the pumpkins we created.  My favorite one was one we did of a pirate.

The weather is finally cool enough to run comfortably outdoors!  Well it's actually been cool the past few weeks, but it went from mega-hot to considerably cooler in such a short time that I needed a bit of time to get used to it!  That said, yesterday afternoon I wanted nothing more than to go explore on foot! 

I'd just finished watching Harold and Maude and was ready to seize the day.

I went out for a run around my neighborhood and ended up over to the track at the nearby high school, where I ran with my friend Carlos last Sunday.  It's a really nice, springy red track in a big stadium, because track is so big here..jk, I'm pretty sure it actually has something to do with that finely manicured green stuff with white stripes on the inside of the track.  So it's really a treasure to have such a nice track (open to the public!) so close by.  I can hear the sound of silence as I run through the neighborhood here..not like a creepy silence, just a really calm one.  All the streets have "Oak" in the name and many of the houses have big maroon Aggie flags stuck on mini-flagpoles in their lawns, so I got a bit lost on the corner of Oak Briar and Lazy Oaks, but asked a woman walking her dog what street I was headed for and got turned in the right direction.  I loved seeing red, orange, and yellow mums out on people's front porches--my mom, Brother  and I always picked out mums and gourds for our Halloween display when we would go get our pumpkins in the rural areas near our house.  

And for Halloween, I went out last night with my friends and I dressed up as...

Uh, what is she?

I dunno, her camera was out of focus

Hmmm..

Oh, a mime!

All I had to do was add some face makeup, which I took all of $1 and like 8 minutes, to the idea I had for a burglar costume.  I wore black from head to foot, and gloves.  Oh, and I added some red lipstick, too.  I must say I wasn't a very good mime, as I talked a lot.  But I did do some miming throughout the night.  My friend Fenix, who is from Colombia said, "You're a mimo?"  And I was like YES (assuming that mimo=mime in Spanish, which it does).  Fenix said that there are lots of mimes in Bogota, and they are even hired by the mayor to encourage citizens not to behave better:  to not jaywalk, litter, or drive poorly.  I found a news story about it:

            "Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes."

Oh, did I mention Northgate (the College Station bar/downtown scene) was cuhhhraaazy!  Now I get the feeling for what Franklin St. at UNC is like on Halloween, minus the fires.  Thousands of people in costume, filling streets and bars really is a sight to behold.  I really enjoyed bar-hopping with my friends The Gingerbread Man + Puss in Boots (Eric and Yuhong), a skunk + a mad scientist (Carrie and George), girl Robin Hood + a vampire (Xin-Xue and Carlos), and two free-spirited oragami people (Jan and Fenix).  I got to enjoy a glass of Dogfish Head Punkin, which I had all but given up on having this season, as it came and went so fast from the specialty wine/beer store.

Jan and Fenix challenged the idea that you had to be something that people could identify and say, "You're a ______?"  which is kinda a standard greeting on Halloween. Jan and Fenix wore black body suits (Jan's even covered his face) and they had dozens of colorful oragami animals and flowers safety-pinned to their front side.  Fenix had some really ornate flowers in her hair and had painted her face too.  They had spent all afternoon doing oragami together, which I just thought was more adorable than anything. 

Well isn't it my lucky day

I can't believe how well this day is going.  I am just shocked.

Yes, I have definitely eaten a couple squares of chocolate already, but that was not by stroke of good fortune

For the first time, EVER, I sat down to my analytical chemistry quiz and knew how to answer every single problem!  Granted, it was my third one, so I am being a bit dramatic with the ever and there were 7 problems, not like 20, but I'm not mentioning this happy event just to make concessions!  I am so so jazzed!   This subject is tough for me, so to appear like I know it by acing a quiz is just great.  For all the professor knows, I do know it!  Ohmygosh, maybe I actually do?!  Could I actually be starting to understand this stuff?    This quiz was on Raman Spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).   NMR can be utilized by really cool chemical oceanographers, but also by doctors--the property of NMR is the basis for the standard procedure nowadays for getting a good look at the brain, heart, muscle and cancer, without any ionizing radiation--an MRI scan.

So that quiz went down this a.m. at 10:20.  I had gotten to school at about 7:45 to study in my office, but had to evacuate the building shortly before 9, because of a fire alarm, so I did my last hour of study in the library.  I alternated between feeling calm and feeling unprepared, but tried to be brave and think positive and obviously, the positivity won out :D

Then!!  I got a call from the pest guy who had come to check out the situation in my Apt.  He couldn't get any fleas to jump on him even though he said he was crawling around on all-fours.  I haven't mentioned that I have thought that I had a flea problem and have been vacuuming and chloroxing like a madwoman for the past 5 days.  But guess what!!? NO need to apply harsh chemicals to the Apt.--I was so bothered by that, obviously! as I love my lil space and am sorta bent on protecting my health!-- because the apt. doesn't have fleas!!!  I did think it was strange that the lil things weren't leaving any bite marks on me..turns out what I was infested by was a fruit/fungus fly population that has dwindled due to my intense cleaning regimen but will really be gone after maintenance takes care of the refridgerator's water trap that had become full.  Shout out to Brian, the pest guy, for his investigative work!!  He said he would only apply a non-toxic aerosol spray made of pine, as he had seen my toxic-scared notes, bless him.  And he told me to just leave some chlorox in my sink/shower drains once a week (not too often or you will kill off the good bacteria that's there) for a couple weeks.

Gooooood day.

Two other random fortuitous things--
I was emailed today about being "selected" (ooooooh) to participate in a focus group study for the office of graduate studies on Monday.  I guess to make sure we show up for the hour-long discussion or whatever, they have proferred, "a Starbucks Coffee gift card, a t-shirt, and a number of other miscellaneous gift items."  I don't know what's more exciting: the starbucks (which I just enjoyed for the first time in College Station yesterday, or the mystique of the miscellany.  

And 2nd, I saw a poster for a Bollywood Movie Night in the Student Rec Center tonight!  I am stoked to hang out with other Indian culture lovers.  Some Bollywood is incredibly cheesy, but some is just excellent, like my fav, Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na, which I saw at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary years ago.  Whether it actually has a good plotline and has people who can actually act isn't important, I love it all!  

I'm going to my fav Power Yoga class now, then will go to the library to get a new free read since I finished Murakami's After Dark (liked it a lot!).

Happy Friday!!!