things i love: april 2010

When April's gentle rains have pierced the drought

Of March right to the root, and bathed each sprout
Through every vein with liquid of such power
It brings forth the engendering of the flower

April, truth is - I'm crazy about you. How can I help it when you bring me things like...

• reading The House of Mirth in one-page installments, via DailyLit, via Gordon, during boring parts of my CogSci lecture
• Tom
• being a blogger
• naturally waking up at 7
• Bangkok Thai on University! Very good, and the interior is adorable.
• that upon hearing that I wasn't coming home for Easter weekend, my family came to visit armed with bags and bags of oranges, homemade cranberry oatmeal cookies, Rice Krispie Treats in the shape of Easter eggs with sprinkle designs, cartons of lactose-free milk, and children's toys
• repotting my plants and the feeling of dirt under my fingernails and the smell of damp earth
• my French math GSI for never having heard of L'Hospital's rule, and for pronouncing the S
• that I found my contact lens after dropping it on the floor of the women's bathroom in the library, and that nobody stepped on it
• getting a 94 on my math midterm, if only because one section asked for a prose explanation, and what I wrote was ambiguous enough to be correct
• reading about quarter-life crises
• Elisabeth, my Uma Thurman graduate student instructor, who told us in her German accent not to pursue anything unless we "have a fire inside for it," and who said that some people hit their quarter-life crises early, in college, and who confirmed that linguists don't get jobs
  
• that my current lab partner, Stephanie, is taking computer science classes with me this summer and this fall, which makes them that much less terrifying
• attempting pin curls after finding out that's what kater from all this happiness does to her hair, and discovering that they aren't that difficult (thanks to the following video tutorial)




• that Denny can't spell
• the pricelessness of feeling cute after months and months of the uglies
• deciding to skip math lecture to do math homework
• Shelby
• Harriet!
  
• Lincoln
• TK
• Connie
  
• Victoria
• Jess
  
• that my right shoulder doesn't get tired carrying around a laptop anymore
• the return of GLEE!!!
• Jon Groff (who is openly gay) as Jesse St. James UNF WHAT IS THIS MAN EVEN.
  

MELCHI GABOR! What a radical!

Unf.

THIS.

• backcombing my hair into a giant, voluminous mess, even if it is damaging
• Jessie + La Med
• the peculiar all-over numbing sensation that comes with using peppermint body wash
• Kathleen
• Charles, the other GSI, because he is a really good lecturer
• Henri for "Woah! When I said 'final,' all your heads popped up."
• my skirt from eShakti
  

• finishing a midterm... and being sad that it is over
• Denny and Spencer and Café Strada, as usual
  
• giggling with Daniel and trying to sit up really straight in class while producing voiceless nasals
• saying no
• watching a row of four guys in front of me fall asleep, all their heads lolling in different directions
• getting a pre-curve 90 on a midterm when the average is in the 70s
• Jergens Express & Nivea fake tan!
• the cute dirty blonde in suspenders holding a guitar walking down Telegraph, and mutual elevator eyes and smirks
• feeling woozy-tired before 10:30 PM
• The Cellar! (Jocelyn told me about it last year, but I had to check BARE magazine's blog for the exact location.)
  
• Joce & her cooking & Ching & Theatre Rice & the fellow who greeted me at the door by handing me a program and saying "That is a very nice top"
• Kyle Riabko's rendition of "Left Behind"
• strawberries
• seeing gay couples holding hands, because I'm not in San Francisco anymore
• hearing spoken Cantonese, because I'm not in San Francisco anymore
• Léon with diacritic, and the wonder that is YouTube

• the moment when I lie down in bed and my spine feels like it's uncrunching
• that 9 years of Catholic schoolgirl skirts have left my legs completely insensitive to the cold
• my attempted panade, thanks to LifeHacker
• Angela for baking our entire lab cookies and bringing us sour candy
  
• coming back to my apartment at around 9 PM to a cooked dinner of roast eggplant stuffed with pork with garlic shavings, angel-hair pasta, and green beans
  
• new shoesies!
• Little Henry's on Balboa. Yelp reviews be damned. I have too many childhood memories attached to this place.
  
• Tony, who should technically be filed under Things I Love: May 2010, but I'll give him 33 minutes of leeway
  
• This disproportionately huge photo collection of Serious Lookers Jake Gyllenhaal and Frida Gustavsson:
  

[one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight]

[all Fridas via The Fashion Spot]