two months in the making

2000 pieces. starry night. practically impossible. (thanks camille, for the christmas present.)

we started this puzzle the first week of may. we thought it would be a fun summer project.

turns out it's going to be a fun summer and fall project. but we've gotten this far and we WILL FINISH!

don't be too jealous

why, yes, we did just schedule an in-water massage at the blue lagoon in iceland.

we may be just getting TOO, TOO excited for this trip!

(thank you, vandenbergs, for, as always, being the ultimate example of how to travel in style.)

this really happened.

tommy and i went to the grocery store last week for two reasons: 1) we needed food and 2) we needed treats to eat while we watched harry potter that night. we started in the produce section, as usual, and got our standard tomatoes-lettuce-carrots-broccoli-peaches-etc., and then started walking through the bakery section to get to the rest of the store. we knew we didn't need to buy any bread because we had a loaf in our freezer that we had to use up before we left on our trip.

but we stopped by the nice bread counter.

you know, the stand with the artisan bread and the baguettes and the rolls and the breadsticks and the whole clove garlic bread that just KILLS me. we looked longingly at the counter, knowing that We'll Know We've Made It When we can buy artisan bread any time we want and not feel bad about it.

and then tommy saw that every. bread. product. had a sale sticker on it. 99 cents, 59 cents, 29 cents! per loaf!

we were giddy like children on christmas morning. of course the only thing we could think was BUY BREAD BUY BREAD BUY MORE BREAD, and we stocked our cart with as many loaves as we could think of an excuse to need. i ran to get tomatoes and basil to make bruschetta so we could use up some of the bread while tommy closely questioned the bakery employee whether such a sale had ever happened in the history of kroger stores before. we took more loaves than two people could ever reasonably eat and walked away thrilled with our genius.

we took kit kats, 100 grands, chocolate-covered raisins, and several mini-baguettes (and some whole clove garlic bread) to watch HP that night. and we were totally satisfied.

epilogue: we finished all the loaves we bought. and even made some homemade bread last night because we just didn't have enough. hello, we're the leiningers, and we are bread-aholics.

weekend update

even though we've both been working like CRAZY to get ready for our big trip (which starts ONE WEEK from today!), we still did some fun stuff this past weekend.

which included going to see HP7 part 2 at the midnight showing (i enjoyed it--especially the end part where they tried to make harry, ron, hermione, and ginny look like they were 40-year-olds and failed),

going to a "movie on the lawn" at american tobacco,

and making banana bread, bruschetta, and loads of blueberry and blackberry jam with the berries we picked with tommy's family while they were here. FANTASTIC.

the funniest moment of primary today

was when i looked over and saw tommy (who was subbing in with me while my companion teacher libby is out of town) getting his back rubbed by a five-year-old girl who was in our sunbeams class last year. and she kept doing it.

good thing i'm not the jealous type. and good thing tommy is just so super popular with the under-eight crowd.

musical thursdays

hello, john mayer. i remembered that sometimes i do like you.

hope you're all going to see harry potter 7 part 2 tonight! because WE sure will be--see you there!

OCD

maybe i was an editing minor because i'm ocd about consistency, or maybe i'm ocd about consistency because i was an editing minor. we'll never know, but what really matters is that I'M REALLY, REALLY OCD ABOUT THINGS BEING CONSISTENT.

this is why i don't ever use caps in this blog (except when i want to; see above). i couldn't switch to using normal caps now after two years of writing without them--it would drive me crazy. it would make me want to go back and change all the old posts to having caps. which i will not do. which is why i will not change to using caps. done.

anyways, i've spent an inordinate amount of time today trying to make my moodle site (ncsu's equivalent to blackboard) and assignment sheets all have the exact same formatting, wording, and referencing.

i can promise you that not one freshman will notice if i refer to it as "peer-reviewed copies" on one page and as "rough drafts reviewed by your peers" on another, or if the header is on one as "Purpose:" and on another as "The purpose of this assignment is:"--but i can't let it go.

oh well, i'm over it. (by which i mean, i'm over the fact that i'm not over it. and i'm going to keep ruthlessly editing those ridiculous assignment sheets till they're dang perfect and all the same or i'll die.)

oh, but it feels good to have made some progress on planning my class! (you know, that COLLEGE CLASS i'm teaching IN A FEW WEEKS? yep, no. big. deal.)

just in case you'd thought i was getting any more mature

instructions on how to have a great time with your sisters-in-law when they're visiting you and it's late on a sunday night and you can't think of anything else to do:

(aka how to do prank conference calls on skype:)

1. turn on skype.

2. choose 2 acquaintances (who also know each other) from your cell phone and enter their phone numbers into your skype account.

3. call them both on a conference call at the same time.

4. mute yourself.

5. listen as they both answer the phone and try to figure out who called who and how they ended up talking.

6. laugh.

7. repeat. for a few hours.

summer. (summer. summer. summer.)

i know it's summer because i haven't blogged in weeks. or even thought about blogging. and i have loads of unread emails in my ncsu inbox (whoops) and several un-listened-to voicemails on my phone. and i feel great about it. and we leave for iceland in three weeks.

speaking of summer, let's talk about high school musical. i like the high school musical series as much as the next non-musically-elitist person (okay, maybe more) but i have a serious problem with the last song of the last movie. these are some of the lyrics:

"high school musical, who says we have to let it go? it's the best part we've ever known... why can't the rest of my life be like a high school musical?"

i strongly disagree with those sentiments . . . they make me want to laugh and cry. but i can't help singing along anyways.

and on that note, watch this video making fun of high school musical: it is a crack-up.