A modest proposal

It is upon my return to Oxford, after seeing Z off to the airport, that I finally have access to a computer and time to write this update. Unfortunately, his departure means we won't see each other again until July, but he's off to amazing adventures through Appalachia, and there remains much work for me to accomplish before my own exit from Ox, so it's probably for the best. Besides this, I can't complain too much because his visit was a pretty great one for several reasons, not least of which being....

WE'RE ENGAGED!

(to be married, more specifically.)

I'll spare you the satire and get on with the story:

After a few days together in Oxford, Z and I did some train-hopping that brought us to a few towns/villages in the Cotswolds, west of Oxford. [I'll post some pictures+stories of the actual trip later; we've got more important details to cover.] On our third day of trekking, we found ourselves in Bath (minds out of the gutter, folks) and with our thin wallets preventing us from paying for fancy tours or special exhibits, we needed to kill some time...

Thus we ended up in Henrietta Gardens—a lovely place, even in the cold—and proceeded to take silly pictures as we wandered through the park. The whole trip, we'd been using my camera's self-timer to snap pictures of the two of us together, and sneaky little Zachary used this fact to trick me good: In one corner of the park, he set up the camera to take a bunch of consecutive shots for what I thought was going to be a goofy little way to pass the time. He got me.

....without further ado, here's the frame-by-frame:

[And I promise, folks, it's authentic. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have acted this out if I tried.]

life has been a __?__

This is what my life has been like since returning from Italy:

I want to call it a whirlwind, but one of the teddybear-esque tumbleweed variety pictured above; nothing altogether damaging. The long flight back was shortly followed by:

• two weddings, 
• a few days of various graduation activities, 
• Mothers' Day, 
• several furniture relocation extravaganzas, 
• and bunches of job applications + interviews. 

Currently, I'm assisting with the recovery of Harper Surgery #2 of 2 (the first go-round was with my brother a few weeks ago), so the fun continues.

Whew.

Tomorrow is Monday, so hopefully I'll be able to get a real post in. Until then, here's more tumbleweeds (kind of)...

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday :)

-M

music to my ears: Freiburg, day 2b

Disclaimer: There are videos in this post, but...they're not of the highest quality. 
My bad, folks, my bad.

(Also, please just ignore my talking...Thanks)

Maybe my perspective was biased by my happening to live with a music student and then meeting a bunch of his friends, but Freiburg seemed to be full of music.

The town is populated by a large selection of music students, street musicians, symphonies, and local bands. I wish I took more videos, but alas, I am a pansy, so here we are.

fast talkers

Okay, so maybe it's just because I didn't do my homework ahead of time, and/or maybe it's because my brothers and I tend to speak slowly, but Italians sound like the woman in this video to me, most of the time. 

I swear the language is set up to sound way faster.

A few of my cousin's friends met us out the other night, and we had fun exchanging tongue twisters. I taught them this classic, and in return I got this:

This.

This is my favorite video in the whole wide universe:

Alright, I might have exaggerated a bit. It's not my faaaavorite video, but I was reminded of it today and cracked up. Couldn't help but share (with you few people left who haven't seen it, or those of you who don't mind a reminder).

For another silly YouTube laugh, this one's always great, as well as its sequel. Enjoy!
-M

our blog's namesake...

yep, this is the TV show from which this blog's title was born.

and yep, this show is on cartoon network. for, you know, like, small children.

can't believe it.

2012

Happy New Years Errbody!

MM #6

Well, there is certainly noise, trouble, and hard work goin on 'round these parts, so 

here's to the hope that peace joins the brigade! Cheers!

Alright, confession time-- I was gonna do a whole thing with the usual I'm-busy-but-trying-to-make-it-work spiel (which I may or may not have just spelled "schpeal"). Then I decided to go against the grain and offer some silly commentary to even sillier Cross Country photos [from my last NCAA race that took place last week]. Running pics never work for me. Or when they do, only my leg shows up in the picture. Great.  And THEN, I realized that the words "copyright protected" actually apply to me, so out the window that plan went.

So now I'm back to boring ole nothins. Today wasn't much of a Mindful Monday, anyway, since my brain was totally spent on a Genetics-test-gone-awry. Oh well. Here's a video Zack had me watch the other day. I love this guy's late night talk show interviews.