comparisons

milkshakes are to rachel as what is to aaron?

a) nutty nuggets (the off brand of grape nuts)
b) sour patch kids
c) sharp cheddar cheese
d) tuna melts and hot chocolate


answer?
c! sharp cheddar cheese!

on wisconsin!

i. love. curriculum. vitaes!

yes. i, rachel louise robison, have been quoted to say, with excitement in my eyes that i love curriculum vitaes. that isn't actually the plural of curriculum vitae, it might be something like curricula vita.

yesterday was martin luther king jr day. it mostly consisted of homework for me, and homework, band practice, and group meeting for aaron. we had planned to go to midway to see the "ice castles" in the evening, which we did...but it was a pretty hilarious event.

the whole escapade began with a little song that i wrote on the spot. "we can take our pasta, to go, to go." it was funnier when i was carrying aaron around our kitchen on my back while doing the conga line dance.

we didn't actually take our pasta to go. we ate dinner at home, then left for midway. first we had to stop for cash. oops. aaron didn't bring his debit card, and neither did i. it's okay, chase is supposed to give us cash advances for atm withdrawals. that didn't work either. so we go home again and i get my debit card. by then, however, we figure we can find a bank up in midway.

boy were we wrong.

first we go to a gas station. the atm is out of cash and they don't do cash back. then we go to a grocery store. the grocers says they give cash back on debit transactions. we buy five chocolates for one dollar, i swipe my card, it goes through as credit. no cash back. the grocer, in fact, knows nothing. seven eleven? they also don't do cash back. finally we succumb to use an atm with a $2.50 fee. bah.

but finally we make it to the ice castle. a make shift area was set up in downtown midway where some man sprinkles water on structures and makes these ice-dripping things.

don't you think you could get lost in there? it looks like an awesome ice cave.... and these next guys on top of the structure, they remind me of the russian dancing flowers from fantasia. anyone remember them?

boogey men?

we really only walked around for about 20 minutes, mostly trying to set up the camera so that it could take a timed picture of us. we only really got one semi-success...the one posted above.

notice the grainy pictures? someday i'll be good a taking pictures...or maybe a better camera would do the trick. but that's beside the point. it was a fun evening in celebrating of martin luther king jr. and i had a crazy dream that night...

words from the wise

this year for christmas, aaron and i got a lot of funny and interesting books. i thought i might share some of the words of wisdom from these books:

1. "the viking book of aphorisms" by w.h. auden and louis kronenberger
"a woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful." - kraus
"a man who could not seduce men cannot save them either." - kierkeguard
"everyone has talent at twenty-five. the difficulty is to have it at fifty." - degas

2. "the superior person's book of words" by peter bowler
bavardage n. foolish or empty chatter. attracts the adjective mere, in contradistinction to words such as balderdash or poppycock, which attract the adjective absolute
lexiphanic a. given to the use of pretentious terminology, such as the word lexiphanic


3. "500 ways to change the world" by the global ideas bank
371- set up a living-room in your street
102- design a dollhouse to encourage green goals
478- lend books as a novel way to cut crime
271- make the small print as large as the large print
49- empower the homeless through musical means


4. "if ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?" by john lloyd and john mitchinson
"i don't even know what street canada is on." - al capone
"i don't do drugs. i am drugs." - salvador dali
"looking for fish? don't climb a tree." - chinese proverb

my last semester!

that's right. this is my last semester of college as far as i know. i am taking mostly dance classes to finish up my major, but i am also taking comparative literature 202 in order to fill my final two general requirements. the amount of literature i have to read is daunting. buying all the novels used from the bookstore cost about $200. i have already ready shakespeare's "king lear" and "the winter's tale" and have thoroughly enjoyed them both. the next beast, however, is "don quixote". i'm excited to read it, but its shear volume gives me the shivers. luckily, basically all we have to do for the class is read. no papers or anything. just reading and interesting discussions in class, a few pop quizzes, and a final.

aaron is into his semester of doom, otherwise known as the business core. if my small tower of enjoyable novels quadrupled in size, put on a business suit, and threw a lot of large group projects at me, i might understand what he is up against. he is a junior in the program, and he is realizing that most of the other kids in his classes are seniors...they chose to save the worst for last. luckily for aaron, somehow these sorts of classes excite him--managerial economics, organizational behavior, something about supply chain, ethics... i don't know. he is in a somewhat undesirable bundle of classes for his "core"--which only comes in bundles. it is undesirable because he has a friday class, which actually turned out to be a blessing because his class sizes are ridiculously small, about 15 kids per class. it is funny that i think that is so ridiculous, when really that is ideal. anyway, he has a lot of work, and i hope he survives with his sanity still as functional as it has been.

on another note, i just finished a book that i am a little bit obsessed with. i started it sometime around christmas break and had to finish it before i started into "don quixote". it is called "how we decide" by jonah lehrer. it is all about the brain and what actually happens in our brains as we approach the task of making decisions. he presents a lot of really fascinating studies and cases about people (and sometimes rats or monkeys) making decisions, or not being able to make decisions. i would seriously recommend this book to all, since we all make decisions. perhaps if we learn more about it, we will all make better decisions, save more on our car insurance, and not get stuck with that ugly sweater we end up hating a month later. (the book talks about more meaningful things, as well)

traditions...traditions!

seeing as this was the first holiday season that aaron and i have been married, we decided everything we did on those special holidays (apart from family traditions) had to become our traditions. at least that is what we said on christmas eve morning. however, if we stuck to that plan, every year our holiday would include some wonderful things, and some things we could do away with:

christmas eve
- i will traditionally do a headstand on aaron's belly in the morning
- we will traditionally read a book in bed
- we will traditionally watch "contact", or perhaps some other movie produced in the nineties that we remember to be much better than it actually is, hence feeling like we wasted christmas eve
- i will traditionally fall down the stairs and slide on my butt

christmas day
- we will traditionally read a christmas book by the fireplace
- we will traditionally kill zombie nazis, making us feel like we have lost the feeling of christmas
- we will traditionally become pirates and defeat the other ships on the sea
- we will traditionally stay up until midnight playing games

new years eve
- i will tradtionally cook all afternoon and wash lots and lots of dishes
- aaron will traditionally improve his resume
- we will traditionally make homemade pizzas, and even have a slight disaster when we can't figure out how to get the pizza from the table to the pizza stone
- we will traditionally play "sonic heros" for several hours, only beating two levels and drinking sprite with orange and pomegranate ice (aaron was poking fun at me for saving our juice in ice form, but look now how it came in handy to make a delicious drink!)
- we will traditionally watch "salt", or perhaps some other movie produced in the current year that we haven't yet seen
- we will traditionally miss the arrival of the new year, but realize it happened five minutes later

new years day
- we will traditionally sleep until 11
- we will traditionally go for a freezing cold walk through a park where ducks will laugh (or quack) at aaron's jokes, then our toes will freeze and we will run back to the car
- aaron's neck will traditionally get very, very sore, and i will spend a few hours trying to heal it
- we will traditionally watch a few hours of "arrested development", or perhaps some other televsion series that we haven't watched before
- we will traditionally play farkle and blokus, or perhaps some other fabulous new games that we got, while eating oreo balls and drinking more sparkling drink
- we will tradtionally watch "tiger in the snow", or perhaps some other foriegn movie that i love, but i will fall asleep during it

we may have created some terrible tradtions, but we created some pretty great ones too!