7 Quick Takes

Happy Friday, friends.  Linking up with Jen, as per the usual!

 

1. To new readers, those stopping by from The Nectar Collective or elsewhere, Velcome – I hope you will (mostly) not regret it!  This is a blog filled with mosquitos and kitten teething, so…you’ve been warned.  Thanks for stopping by!
2. Guess what finally came?! My sewing machine!!  I carried it home yesterday, in a box that could probably fit me and my whole family, pausing several times to send a plea to the heavens for upper arm strength.  It is lovely, you guys.  It is so pretty.  I’m so excited to get it figured out and start using it.  Also, I really need to start lifting weights or doing planks or something, because my arms were Jell-O by the time I got that sucker into my apartment.
3. Speaking of kittens, I accidentally closed Sheba in the fridge this week.  Yes, Sheeby Sheebs likes to poke her head in the fridge whenever I open it, just to, you know, check.  Usually I nudge her out of there, but that day, of all days, I didn’t see her and didn’t nudge.  Sheba is a pretty quiet kitten – she sort of chirps, and has a little silent meow that she does when she’s saying hello – but she does have two ferocious yowls she’ll let out on occasion.  The first is what I call her battle cry, when she leaps off of the couch to run frantically after some dust.  The second is her “Help Me!” meow, which she brought out when I first got her and she couldn’t find the litter box.  When the fridge door closed there were some pretty frantic “Help Me!” yowls going on.  It took me a second to figure out where she was, because, well, she likes to get into just about every door I open, but I found her and she’s fine.  Shaken, not stirred, and lightly chilled.
4. I have 12 new bug bites on my legs and feet.  Down from last week.  Bugs: 1, Cornelia: 1.
5. I have a little crack in my ceiling (which I told my apartment peeps about), which normally would not be cause for so much worry, except that it’s the side of my apartment where it sounds like my upstairs neighbor dumps out 2 entire bathtubs every night at 11pm, and then rakes his floor.  Everybody has neighbors like that, is what I tell myself.
6. There’s a maintenance guy at work who speaks Russian, and every time he sees me he talks to me in Russian – which is great! Except every time he stops by I have a heart attack because I have to speak Russian.  Full-on cold-sweat flashbacks of my Soviet-style professors in college, complete with nervous smiling.  I really have got to up my game.
7. There should be a re-vamping of the look of this blogging space, hopefully, in the next week or so, so keep your eyes peeled.  I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out, and hope you like it also!

That is all from this end.  Happy weekend!

7 Quick Takes

Hello! How's your week been?

Linking up with Jen :)

1. This is maybe old news, but this recipe for Banana-Nutella-Pistachio Popsicles from Smitten  Kitchen is basically my dream come true.  It looks so easy and perfect for the summer (especially here in TX, where it is a bajillion degrees out by the time the sun comes up), not to mention duh-lish. She's been posting different popsicle recipes for several days now - go check them out! Now I've just got to find some popsicle molds...and maybe, you know, a blender.
2. This article by Costica Bradatan in the New York Times on the "Opinionator" Blog, about learning and writing in a foreign language, so aptly captures what it is I love about language - and what is so challenging and frustrating about it as well.
3. It seems like the new BBC America show "Broadchurch" has been all over the newswaves recently(or maybe I spend too much time on npr.com).  Much like my mom and sister, I love a good mystery series, and now that Inspector Lewis is over (sob), I may check this out.  Eight episodes of grief and angst?? Check.
4. Having read "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg, been a Girl Scout and gone to a women's college, I really enjoyed this article on NPR about the recent rise in female COOs - and then stumbled onto this company, called The Muse, a career platform focused on professional women.  The interview with one of the founders on thejanedough.com was also a good read.
5. Grace over at Camp Patton posted about searching for a good mascara, and on a similar (and incredibly deep)(not) note, I may have been converted from my green-top-pink-tube Maybelline ways to BeneFit's "They're Real!" mascara.  It could be the small sample-size tube that fits in the smallest of pockets, or the spikey blaster-wand, but I'm liking it.  Every time I wear it I think, "Yes! Very nice."  We'll see if this lasts once I run out of it and am loathe to spend twenty-three bucks on mascara.
6. I've been enjoying the Mishnah Yomit from CY I get in my email every day, especially recently, since it's been about offerings that used to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem - the kinds of birds, fruits and so on, the types and decorations on the baskets, how they would hold the baskets, who would come when, what they would say - the whole ceremony of it has been fun to discover.
7. Sheba continues in her quest to wake me in the wee hours of the morning.  This week she's been removing the caps from the something on the side of the toilet and swatting them back and forth across the floor, bouncing them off of the walls, mewing, bringing them to me and biting my feet...it has been a true pleasure to live with her.

And that's all! Have a lovely weekend, wherever you are.

7 Quick Takes

Here we go! Linking with Jen:

• Taylor Swift and Carly Simon singing "You're So Vain" together.  Thank you, Birchbox Blog, for bringing this into my life.  Need I say more?

• This scene from "Orange Is the New Black," a new show on Netflix about a white woman from CT who ends up in prison on drug charges - it's really about all of the women in that prison, and it's smart and funny and honest.

• I'd like to give a shout-out to DART, the public transportation system in Dallas.  I took two buses to the Drivers License Center this week and then three buses back to work on routes I'd never been on before and the buses were clean, air-conditioned, on time, and the drivers were helpful and polite.  With the exception of one girl on the bus at 6:30 in the morning who was yelling about cutting people who made faces at her, it was not bad.

• I recently discovered art.com, where you can find paintings, photographs, and canvas prints you love and print them out.  My grandmother had a copy of a Modigliani hanging in her apartment when I was little, and since I figured I might as well make this place homey (finally), I've been looking at different prints I like.  The one at up at the top, called Gypsy Woman With Baby, is a favorite, plus I really love Brian Kershisnik's work, though most of it is too expensive for me right now (I like this one).

• Did anybody hear what Pope Francis said this week? The more I find out about him, the more he seems like an interesting man, and I'm looking forward to following his papal reign.

• Sheba's newest favorite activity is carrying out vicious assaults on my feet, toes, ankles and heels and then...licking where her teeth and claws ripped into my flesh.  Delightful and charming.  Not sure where she got that one from.  Also I really need to invest in a pair of cat nail clippers, otherwise my feet won't survive.

• Still reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - slow going, but I'm finding it soothing.  The children really seem horrible - why do adult children always seem horrible? - but I'm only halfway through it.  More to come when I'm finished with it.

Happy weekend!

7 Quick Takes

Here are 7 tremendous things about this week:

1. My orchid bloomed! My $9.99 miniature orchid from the supermarket, the tiniest orchid there ever was, which sits by the windowsill in my office, morphed from a little green bud into a beautiful, proud little flower.  My brown thumb turns a bit greener every time I look at it.
2. I've been teaching myself how to code on CodeAcademy.  I've been learning HTML basics and what things like URL and CSS actually mean! URL = Uniform Resource Locator (you bet I looked that up in my stapled-printer-paper-notebook), and CSS = Cascading Style Sheets. This has also gotten me in touch with a girl I knew in college, who majored in Computer Science and posts a lot about coding programs for girls and women on her Facebook page.  Practical skills, friends, practical skills.
3. Skyped with two sets of fantastic people this week, friends from both coasts of the U.S. of A. and it brought so much joy into my week and made it feel full.  Monday night mixed learning with life updates and lessons I should remember.
4. Started keeping (again) a list of things I'm thankful for, which I've been filling out each morning.
5. 3 out of 5 nights this week ---> 8 hours of sleep.  This has meant fewer days bemoaning my sorrows and pitiful existence, etc. etc.
6. Sheba killed a cockroach (maybe water bug?) that was in the bathtub.  I was thrilled that she is, in fact, a bug-killer, and also mildly grossed out.  Twitching antennae and bug limbs do not fill me with joy.
7. Enrolled in my company's 403(b) program! Huzzah.  I got a confirmation email from the Retirement Board letting me know that I was making an important step to ensure my financial future.  Yes indeed.  If there's anything that will make you feel like a grown person with a job, it is knowing that you will be retiring in  2054. Yikes.

And that's all for me! This is my first time linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary for 7 Quick Takes - here's to many more :)