Yay May!

Yay 5 de Mayo! Sorry to be that guy, but.. I have the best job in the world. To celebrate 5 de Mayo and Mother's Day, all of the grade levels at OHE put together a fantastic Mexican-themed music and dance show. I give you Pre-K's version of El Jarabe Tapatio:



Grad school seems kind of like a day at the dumpster compared to how much fun this was. Someone, please press the Pause button until I'm ready to say "Goodbye" to my second family (which will probably be NEVER).

Yay Red Sox! We got to see the Red Sox play with their heads up their butts at our very own Ranger's stadium! It's not really a Sox game unless they're hopelessly losing, so we sat through the game knowing that at the very least, we were having an authentic Red Sox experience. 

Yay Med School Prom! It's kind of like real prom, only:
1. Nobody goes to med school prom.
2. It's in Deep Ellum, aka Dallas's creepy underbelly that for some Godforsaken reason, everybody keeps telling me is "not so bad." It IS that bad. It is.

Like everything else in the past 5 months, the event was Gatsby-themed, so here's our attempt at looking dapper! Ain't we got fun?

Yay Jarabe de Palo! Years will go by and I will never be emotionally stable enough to remember this concert without torrential sobbing. FOR REAL. Ernesto and I saw Jarabe de Palo in Leon, Gto. and it was hands down the most beautiful musical experience I've had in my entire life. Like many others, I've been listening to my parents' Jarabe de Palo CDs since I was 7. Perhaps due to the fact that the only music my parents brought on our 24 hour road trip to Yellowstone was Depende, they've been my mental soundtrack to every romantic encounter I've had since I was 14. Needless to say, it was all kinds of crazy to LITERALLY brush shoulders with Pau Dones at our hotel the night of the concert. I hope that he'll remember how cool and collected I looked in the hotel elevator instead of my out-of-control waterworks of pure, unrefined joy at the concert. Seriously, every time Pau looked at me, I looked like this:

Yay Minnesota! After the senate's disappointing show of incompetence regarding basic gun control in the past month, it was refreshing to see my home state make real progress towards marriage equality. Finding a person who brings out the best in you and who loves you unconditionally is such a privilege and a joy; the search for someone with whom to make such a special commitment should be the tricky part, not asking for that commitment to be publicly recognized and affirmed. I'm so thrilled for the many friends and neighbors who are one (huge) step closer to receiving their due recognition for their life-long commitments. There's more to Minnesota than Prince and Judy Garland and a bunch of lakes!

Yay TMJ! Usually my jaw sort of sorts itself out after a few minutes when it locks open or shut, but this week I went a full three days of looking like a really untalented ventriloquist because nothing would pop back into place on its own. The cons are pretty obvious, but one big PRO is having "Pop, Lock and Drop It" stuck in my head all the time! Or maybe that's a con, too.


Yay Family! Against all odds, my family made the 16-hour drive to Dallas to spend a mere 24 hours with us, and then make the 16-hour drive back to Rochester. Are you getting the sense that I'm the luckiest person in the world? Because that's what it feels like when my family showers me with love like that. One of the most memorable moments together was having bacon waffles for breakfast. Bacon waffles. I'm telling you, it was a weekend of wonders.

Yay Herbal Essences!

2012 in Review

Who's up for a recap of the past 12 months?

January

- Tony, Erik and Spencer visited us in Northfield. My calves hurt like a mofo for a week after they left, so there was probably a double-dutch tournament or a lot of jumpy dancing. 

- Ernesto and I flew to Miami for Debby and Yuziel's wedding, where Luis managed to set something on fire during the reception.
- Also in Miami, I learned that car eyelashes are a thing

fake eyelashes aren't just for guidettes

- The Current played "We Are Young" and I texted my brother that fun. is getting famous (there were several exclamation points). we r hipzturds. 

February

- Ernesto and I ate at a Chinese buffet and I opened a fortune cookie that had TWO FORTUNES.
- I took the GRE in Edina/Eden Prarie. After walking out of the Prometric center in tears, Ernesto bought me a sandwich at Subway and I ate my feelings.
- The amazing Hannah Jensen directed her cinema comps film, Last, where twentyish dancers performed her choreography in the Weitz Center. It was beautifuuuuul, watch it.

March

- I finished studio art comps and dayum it felt great. This was my studio by the end of the term:

je t'aime toujours, boliou

- I finished my Insomnia audiobook and was pretty disappointed that the Stephen King novel had nothing to do with the movie with Robin Williams.

- We spent spring break in El Paso.

- I joined Pinterest and have been wasting approx half of my life on it.

- March to the Reub happened, where I ate more than the appropriate amount of buffalo wings.

April

- Quality Bakery put up the freaking creepiest Easter bunny in their window shop on Division Street. I practically peed my pants every morning on the way to class. Bunnicula is real and it lives in Northfield.

Enjoy your upcoming nightmares. 

- Ernesto gave his comps talk, "DNA, I Hear You're Single.. Molecule Replication"
- We went to our first baseball game in Target Field with Natalia and Francisco, and watched the Red Sox demolish the Twins 11 to 2. Happy birthday to me!
- Ernesto and I tore the apartment apart looking for his Spanish passport.
- We celebrated his birthday in Chicago with Jenny and Tony (who somehow didn't know about the metal bean that everyone visits). We stayed at the (HAUNTED) Congress hotel and it was a good time.We went to a bunch of museums and whatnot, but my favorite part was seeing Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, this pretty cool experimental theatre place where the price of admission is whatever you get when you roll a die.

May
- We went to Madison and woke up to this beauty the morning after Mifflin:

Nothing like the smell of burnt couch in the morning

:(  

- The senior studio art majors had our final show, for which nobody could agree on a title, so it was called Untitled: For Reasons. It was dumb and I hated it UNTIL one of the juniors brought the following snack to the show opening:

Untitled (Four Raisins)

So good. Art in its truest form. 

- I had my final show with Whoa! Hip Hop Dance Co, which was emotional for obvious reasons. It was by far the best show we'd put on since I'd been at Carleton DESPITE being zombie themed, which is saying a lot. There were technical difficulties at the beginning of the show which delayed it about 20 minutes, which was great because my family was running 20 minutes late (shocker). 

I choreographed two dances for the show, but this one was by far my favorite. And it's not even a Justin Timberlake song!

June

- Ernesto and I graduated from Carleton College WOOOOOOOO it was great. 

- The day after graduation, we went to Mexico with my family and spent a week in Cabo with Tia Laura. Ernesto got a minor injury while diving after his sandals on the beach.

- Haley Johnson had her Rochester baby shower and I not-so-discreetly ate half a dozen cupcakes. 

July 

- I cried a lot on the road trip from Rochester to Dallas (where I saw a double rainbow for the first time!)

- Ernesto and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary with his parents and with Gustavito's family in Atlanta, where we ate Spanish food and danced a ton.

- We went to the Dali museum, which was crazy.

- I took his family to the art galleries on Lincoln Road that my family used to visit when we lived in Miami. 

- Luis changed our lives by introducing us to Breaking Bad on Netflix. 

August

- I kept finding different aspects of our Ikea furniture hilarious. Like.. look at these Poker Face Planks. They're adorable. Obviously I was a less-than- efficient furniture assembler. 

Poker Face Paulina hanging out with Poker Face Planks

- Ernesto and I lived the all-american summer camp experience that we'd never had during childhood at his med school retreat. 

- I taught a bunch of M1s the soulja boy dance and the lyrics to 'Call Me Maybe' for a contest that we later WON. You're welcome, future doctors.

- Ernesto officially started medical school.

- We caught up with Breaking Bad and started watching the latest episodes at Angelika Theatre.

September

- I officially started working at Onesimo Hernandez Elementary, and instantly fell in love with all 22 of the kids in my classroom. 

- Ernesto got an iPhone and WE DISCOVERED SONGPOP. 

- I heard this song for the first time and have had it stuck in my head ever since. 

- We went to a waterpark with Ernesto's family, and he lost his sandals. 

- It took me like 5 minutes to realize that the ticket booth guy at Angelika Theatres wasn't kidding when he said that Breaking Bad was over until July. 

- Dr. Mark Sloane died in the Season 9 premiere of Grey's Anatomy, and I had a minor meltdown.

October

- We went to the Texas State Fair and stumbled upon this..

Nicholas Cage: Rock Star Demigod

This alone would have been worth the trip. We also ate 4 different kinds of fried food.. it was a great night overall.

- I sent in a MN absentee ballot so that my vote would count for the prez election.

- We got to Ernesto's white coat ceremony 15 minutes late.

- On Halloween, Ernesto dressed up as Mona Lisa and I dressed up as zombie Dr. Sloane to get $2 burritos at Chipotle. 

November

- My classroom went on our first ever field trip, and I learned that a bus filled with 5-year-olds is the best kind of bus.

- Obama FTW! We celebrated. 

- The beautiful Kristen Vellinger came to Dallas for a conference, and we had her all to ourselves for a Thursday night! She introduced us to a place that has like 5 different kinds of pazookie. Friends let friends eat way too much dessert. 

Just like old times! Minus Jon and pajamas and overall Carleton-related misery.

- We spent Thanksgiving in Rochester, where we sang tons of karaoke and ate tons of food with my family and spent time with some of our dearest friends (e.g. Perkins ). 

December

- Ernesto took his last anatomy exam which is GREAT because now he won't spend as much time showing me gory pictures of people's faces that are 50 shades of terrifying.

- Jon Sands talked to me at a Google hangout and I about died. 

- Todd Anderson said he liked a poem I wrote and I about died a second time. 

- We spent the holidays in Ft. Myers and Luis showed me Grand Theft Auto for the first time.

2012, folks! 

It was a good show. 

2013 has gotten off to a pretty good start ever since I was introduced to Killer Karaoke. 

November happened, and some other stuff

- I originally started writing this post like two weeks ago. It was a Friday night, mere seconds after I'd finished NaNoWriMo, which was supposed to be this really great moment and I had all these plans as to how I was going to celebrate (i.e. I bought a box of brownie mix) (like, quality brownie mix. Ghiradelli double chocolate brownie mix)..  aaaaand I got about 15 words with my Caps Lock on into this blog post before falling asleep on my sofa at 8 pm. #woooo #lastfridaynight

SO, I slept a solid 13 hours and woke up on Saturday not feeling lame at all. Maybe I felt a little bit lame, but to be honest witchu, a good night's sleep is what I've spent the last 4 years fantasizing about throughout college.

I'd wanted to write about Nanowrimo, but that train lost steam a loooong time ago. Suffice it to say, Nano'12 was a trillion times better than Nano'11, probably because I went into it this year with something vaguely sort of similar to a plot. Having something like a plot made this year's writing a lot more fun and significantly less terrible, but the terrible started to show towards the end of the month. That much is evident in this screenshot:

the not-so-glamorous writing process

Needless to say, I took a much-needed break after this really painful paragraph. It feels pretty to good to be done with the whole thing, mainly so I can spend all of my free time playing Song Pop again.

- Speaking of "literally".. I recently saw this tragic/hilarious Presidential Barbie at Toys R Us.

Barbie 2012 stands on her own. (literally)

I saw this and wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Just kidding, the only thing I could possibly do was laugh. A lot.

- Another hilarious thing I saw:

Annakeira Knightlenina.. how Uptown Theatre says "'Anna Karenina', starring Keira Knightley."

- I took this picture during my first night back in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. I'm telling you, it was like a sign from the gods of the Midwest. "Welcome home Paulina. Have some awkward wordplay." 

Anna Karenina was a book that I really, really wanted to like. And I did like it, but it was sort of like reading The Jungle in American Studies (the real ending happens about a hundred pages before the author keeps going on about idealistic social theories). It took me like four years to actually finish it because I kept starting and stopping, but once I got to the end (IN NOVEMBER! This month was full of defining moments for me), I could safely say that I like it enough to endure 2 hours of Keira Knightley. Side note: Jude Law plays Karenin in the movie, soooo maybe he's the real reason I want to watch it on the big screen. All I want for Christmas is to live-tweet this movie, and for Jude Law to retweet everything I write. 

- I am physically incapable of talking about Keira Knightley without mentioning "Love Actually," the movie that I watch by myself every December in a locked room so that no one can hear me crying the entire time. Is this movie the worst kind of emotional pornography known to mankind? Yes. Is that going to stop me from continuing the tradition this weekend? No.

- MY BROOKHAVEN MATH FINAL WAS CANCELLED! BOOYAH! ChRiStMaS mIrAcLe! I didn't even know something like that could happen. Take note, Carleton College. 

After celebrating the fact that I never have to divide anything in different bases again, I started thinking about what finals time was like in Carleton, and most of what I could remember was:

1. not sleeping

2. not showering

3. eating Basil's pizza for a week

4. hating everyone in the library for getting up earlier than I had to find a decent desk

In conclusion..  Oppa Brookhaven Style!

- I recently found out that my phone hasn't been sending all of the texts I write, so that's inconvenient. 

- Daniel freaking Handler was on NPR the other day while Ernesto was in the car and I wasn't even there to geek out about it auuuuuuugh. Talk about pearls before swine.. he didn't even read TSOUE. Fun fact: Jude Law plays Lemony Snicket in the weird movie version of TSOUE. That and GATTACA should be enough to justify how much I like this guy.

- I really don't have that much more to say on here. I just spent an hour in the kitchen deciding whether or not I wanted to bake cookies for some staff dessert potluck tomorrow. I looked up how to tell whether baking soda is still good or not and I tested mine (no worries, our baking soda is working fine).. so yeah. That's how much I value my time. Obviously, it was all for naught because I'm sitting on my bed writing on here instead of licking cookie dough off my spoon. One day, I'll learn to make good choices. 

22B422 Pt. 10: Four-Leaf Clover Hotspots

In honor of Friday the 13th, I thought I'd share some advice for those of you who want to stay safe on this and future Unlucky Days. Here are the places I've found four-leaf clovers in SE Minnesota.


- Camp Philippo Boy Scout Reservation: I found my first four-leaf clover here over the summer of 2001 at a girl's camp. This discovery was basically the root of my friendship with Katie Fleming (HEY KATIE!).

- Essex Park (Rochester, MN): Over the summer of 2003, Francisco and I spent an entire afternoon looking for four-leaf clovers on the grassy area between the volleyball court and the horseshoe things. We found a total of twelve four-leaf clovers (Francisco found most of them but I convinced him that I deserved to keep at least 6 of them since I was older) (I'm not a good person). We went home and taped them up and kept them in an envelope that I promptly lost.

- In front of the Aroma Pie Shop in Whalan, MN on the Root River bike trail: I found one four-leaf clover in the summer of 2007, taped it up (I came prepared!) then used it as a bookmark for 100 Years of Solitude. That sounds so snobby, but it felt really enchanting at the time.

- Behind the John Marshall Parking Lot (Rochester, MN): This was a special find because I saw the four-leaf clover without looking for it. I saw this one during September of 2007, and gave it to the person who'd been sitting next to me.

- Next to the Carleton community garden (Northfield, MN): The best part of ARTS Junior Seminar was when I found 2 four-leaf clovers during one of our outdoor class discussions in spring term of 2011. I kept these in my wallet, they're currently sandwiched behind my learner's permit and an old student ID.