those of you who know me well know that really random things can crack me up. a good example of this would be the monkey joke. or the davey crockett joke. or the pirate joke. or my complete inability to get through a single one of those jokes without dissolving into giggles before i get to the punchline. i apologize about making references to things that most of you won't get; next time you see me/when/if you meet me, ask me and i'll tell you all three. anyhow. another example of something completely random that's making me laugh: almost naked animals. my favorites are trout (likes: rumpus rooms, a good cry, fancy dishes. dislikes: winter boots, cronyism, narrow streets), rooster (likes: interrupting, aquariums, bazookas. dislikes: selfishness, team sports, mandolins), and squirrel (likes: traveling, chili dogs, jazz music. dislikes: gobal warming, minivans, green olives). really can't argue with the squirrel.

robotic conscientious objectors coming in 2008

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Kristaleigh!

1. There are now more than 4000 satellites orbiting kristaleigh!
2. It is impossible to fold kristaleigh more than seven times.
3. Only twelve people have ever set foot on kristaleigh!
4. All gondolas in Venice must be painted black unless they belong to kristaleigh.
5. Kristaleighomancy is the art of telling the future with kristaleigh.
6. Kristaleigh has a memory span of three seconds!
7. Kristaleigh cannot be detected by infrared cameras!
8. It's bad luck for a flag to touch kristaleigh.
9. In the kingdom of Bhutan, all citizens officially become kristaleigh on New Year's Day.
10. Kristaleigh can't drink - she absorbs water from her surroundings by osmosis.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

that's right. you all best be painting your gondolas black.

edited to add that i think april's is even better :)

i have found my next crochet project.

if you don't get it, go here and scroll down to read the letter. brilliant.

now i just need to find someone who will wear it...any volunteers?

blargh. that is what i have to say about my data right now. i will not bore you all with details the way i did with poor dana earlier today, but suffice it to say that it is being uncooperative. so yeah. blargh.

tomorrow is the official start of the spring semester, which is the first semester in eight years in which i will not be taking any classes. that is not a typo. believe me, i wish that it were. so on one hand, this is very exciting. i don't have to take any classes! no more boring lectures! wheee! however...this is a very drastic change in the routine that has been my life since 1998. and really, i suppose, since i was five if you want to get *really* technical. but i'm just talking college here. so it's very surreal to think that the semester is starting, but that it really doesn't mean anything to me at all aside from TA-ing. which is no small potatoes, because you certainly don't want to be the one reading and grading the 15 page papers. although, it is fun to write comments with my little red pen such as "a tureen is something you serve soup in. i believe the word you are looking for is terrain. please proofread your work--just because it's a word doesn't mean it's the right word." that makes me sound like the editing nazi, but i'm really not. if you'd been editing that paper, you'd have been cranky by the time you got to the 'tureen' incident as well. i really want to write things like "you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means," but i think they're too young to get the reference.

but i digress. what i was getting at before i went off on my little tangent was that holy crap i'm almost done with college. which i've said before, and i promise you i will say again, and you're just going to have to bear with me because that's kind of the biggest thing in my life day-to-day right now.

moving on. new neat-o website: http://liveplasma.com. in a similar vein to pandora, which i posted about the other day, you type in a band you like (or a movie, director, or actor, unlike pandora), and it gives you a sort of flow chart of related bands/directors/movies/actors that you might like. you can click on any of the bands that come up, and it will re-expand further, which is nice for when you already know that you like all or most of the bands that it comes up with. also unlike pandora, it doesn't actually play music for you or link you to a resource; it's just a flow chart. but it's neat and visually appealing. and i'm a packaging whore, so visually appealing goes a long way with me. click on the image below to see the chart it gave me when i typed the band Spoon in the search box:

pretty accurate; of the other bands shown, i own (and like) music by eleven of them.

okay, that was a wicked long post. i'm out like a fat kid in dodgeball.

guess who got asked to speak at the state wetland scientists' annual meeting?

(pssst...it's me!)

so, yeah...a little nervous, as usual with the whole public speaking thing, but it will be a good preparation for my (*gasp*) defense. my defense, which is tentatively scheduled for may 1st. i have to make sure that date works for everyone on my committee before it becomes definite. so i've been analyzing data and making graphs and tables--not much writing yet at this point, although i've started a little bit. i have to get all of the numbers crunched before i can write about them, but i'll be starting that phase in the next couple of weeks, and my first draft of my thesis is due on march 13th. my thesis. holy crap, people. where on earth did grad school *go*?

maybe i *won't* be poor forever: check out number 10!

thanks april :)

bk3

i'm not sure where these pictures originated (i got them here), but they're cracking me up. because as i have posted before, the burger king kinda freaks me out. and yet cracks me up at the same time.

nikes

*sigh*

i think i have officially out-run my running shoes.

i guess i shouldn't be surprised, because i've had them for about a year now and i've certainly gotten a lot of good use out of them, but i'm bummed because even though they are space-agey and kinda ugly, they are a) incredibly comfortable, which is hard for me and my super duper crazy high arches to find, and b) expensive. not ridiculously so for running shoes i guess, but more than i'm willing (or able) to drop at the moment. the problem is, now i'm spoiled. example: my sneaks have no tongue--the boot of the sneaker is all one piece. this is great for me, because due to aforementioned crazy high arches, most sneaker tongues dig into the tops of my feet if the shoes are tightly laced. and up until this point, i've had no foot pain associated with these shoes whatsoever. and i have to admit that i really enjoyed being able to personalize them, from picking colors to having my initials embroidered on the heels. rockin'. i can't really justify buying shoes that are going to hurt my feet when for ~$40 more, i know i can get shoes that work really well for me, and that i can personalize myself. so i'm trying to suck it up and squeak a few more weeks out of this pair until i get my next paycheck, but damn...running in bad shoes sucks. i think i'm going to pick new colors this time around though...maybe red and a punchy looking orange. you know, keep my feet happy and motivated while i'm running ;).

i saw this in a print ad the other day:

"no, gravitational physics makes the world go 'round."

which made me laugh. because i'm a nerd.

yarn1

new yarn! april and i went to the yarn store on friday, and i got yarn to re-make rob's hat, and a neat book on felting, and the pictured yarn that i'm going to use to make myself a felted bag (probably something similar to the bag i made for erika, only maybe with a flap...). rock on. i have already professed my love of the noro kureyon yarn, but i was good and only got a few skeins of it. the two pinks and the green were much more reasonably priced, and complemented the noro well i thought. i'm excited to have a project to work on that i'll actually get to keep! but course, it's back burner...i've got to make rob a new hat first, and fix the guitar strap i made for george with the other noro. but i'm excited anyway :)

there are now three reasons that today is a date of note.

1)duh. it's january 1st.
2)it's my parents' anniversary (happy 31st!)
3)mike and sandra had their baby!!! welcome to the world, anna! yay for more cute babies!

if you had asked me on this date a year ago where i'd be in a year's time--not geographically, but it terms of my personal life and my future plans--i would have made a 100% inaccurate prediction. so here's to the unexpected, and the silver lining, and having an open mind. i guess i've learned better than to make predictions, but i know that the coming year is going to be full of change and excitement and i'm looking forward to it. i hope you all are, too.

happy new year!
-krista

i am the music queen. between my iPod (and the rockin' grand total of $175--that is not a typo--worth of iTunes gift certificates that i got for christmas) and the sirius radio that dana got me, i will be oozing commercial free musical happiness from my very pores. and that's just in the car. i can also listen to my iPod inside now, thanks to the speaker dock that my parents got me, and once i get the in-home kit for my sirius (which i ordered today and should get here by friday), i will be able to listen to *that* inside as well. which was a little more tricky, because i do not have a stereo system. also not a typo. at least, i didn't until today, because i went out and bought an inexpensive but really neat-o looking cd player with rca hookups so i can use it for the sirius. this seems to be how i always come into new electronic equipment, a la the time i bought a brand new computer because the one i had was too old to run the iPod software. so all in all, i will never be without music again. and on another music related note, if you haven't yet, check out pandora.com. you tell it a band you like, and it plays you a sampling of songs that you might like based on that. nothing to download; the player runs right off the website and it's free. you can mark songs you like as favorites, and follow links straight from the player to iTunes or Amazon to buy the music for yourself. really great way to get exposed to new artists that you might not hear about otherwise.

okay, that's all for now. i'm going to go revel in the musicfulness (new word!) of my apartment.

Happy Holidays, everybody! I'll be back after Christmas...

so it turns out that my eyes produce less than half of the moisture than they ought to for someone my age. after two and a half years of going to the eye doctor for issues with my eyes/contact lenses, i *finally* found a doc who actually did more than a brief eye/vision exam and found the problem. my corneas are scratched from the dryness, and i have special drops to use and a no-contacts order for three weeks, then i go back for a recheck. i'm just so relieved that i finally found a doctor who didn't either assume that a) i'd been wearing my contacts for too long and lying about it or b) that i must have some strange, resilient strain of pink eye. i've been walking around with scratched corneas! no friggin' wonder my eyes hurt all the time! crikey!

catie tagged me on this a while back only i'm really slow and just noticed...

10 random things about myself...

1. i can not whip egg whites into stiff peaks. i just can't do it.
2. my hair is getting ridiculously long (as ridiculously long as catie's yet? ;) )
3. my toes (with the exception of my big toe) are all almost exactly the same length.
4. i have a freckle on my upper lip.
5. i'm scared to death that i won't be able to find a job in arizona.
6. i don't know how to ski, although people always assume that i'm a skiier.
7. there are six pillows on my bed right now.
8. i generally have very bizarre dreams.
9. i am in a state of awe that my house plants are still alive.
10. i have six different types of cheese in my refrigerator.

there. that was pretty random.

april, you're it!

lean cuisine teriyaki steak bowls are not good. don't eat them. i think they might be fibbing about that whole "steak" thing. meh.

random comment: i can tell by his little kitty glare that chester really resents being called "fuzzy mcfluffypants."

oh yeah...and i changed stuff. but you probably noticed that. i'll probably be changing the main site eventually, too. this is mainly fueled by the fact that i've been stealing that turtle picture all this time; i don't know where it came from or who it belongs to, but it's not mine and i really shouldn't be using it. anywho...lemme know what you think, if you even care enough to have an opinion ;).

i got an A- in aquatic plant bio :). i didn't get my fluvial geomorphology grade yet, but i know i got an A on the paper i wrote (the only graded assignment) and i participated in discussion, so i already know i got an A in that.

*rocking on with my bad self*

okay, i'm done now :)

so...done with classes! forever and ever and always! i have taken a grand total of 16 semesters worth of classes racking up a whopping 191 credits (197 if you count the 6 credits i'll get next semester just for still being a research assistant). and i've decided that despite the fact that i still have a whole world of hurt ahead of me (read: statistical analysis of data, which means math, which means migraines; and then of course writing my thesis. oh yeah, and then presenting and defending it. yikes.), i'm going to take it a little easy until after christmas. sort of a mini-break. not that i won't be doing *any* work, but i'm not going to kill myself. i'm going to get reasonable nights of sleep, and eat breakfast, and go to the gym, and read something other than a journal article. and for four days (well, two whole days and two partial days), i'm going to do nothing but enjoy having dana here, because i don't know when i'm going to get to see him again :P.

right now, i'm going to go make myself a mug of cocoa and snuggle up on my couch and watch my show. tra la.

last. exam. EVER.