• Columbus Success: Tensuke Japanese & Belle’s Bakery, CAM International Market, Gosling’s Ginger Beer, Plato’s Closet Thrift finds:
  
  Grey Shirt-dress $6, Gold-shimmery-flowy top $4, mauve & lace tank top $4, denim jacket with the original H&M tag on it $10, red patent wedges $9. I guess it remains true that I really do have all the luck!  
• Disgraceful demotion to pauper status. 
• Saturday night workout/baseball/rejuvenation & Jewish-made chicken noodle soup
• Easter Sunday at Kenyon + Chinese for dinner with friends :)
• Kansas City postcard from Mom
• Late-night white board messages
  
• Gym 4x
• National Library Week Mini-Cupcakes:
   
• #realtrivialproblems: “The only reason I wear underwear is so that other people will see them. No man has seen my underwear in over six months. It is clearly a failure.”
• SO PRETTY: Professionally printed & bound copies of my thesis
   
• Resume workshop
• HELLA CUTE & UNAPOLOGETIC

Weekend Wishlist:

• Liquid Cupcakes
• Entertainment at the Housing Lottery - the glory & the pain
• Relay for Life-ing
• MRS-ing

I thought I would reward myself for a weekend of hard work. I intended to buy new music on Amazon, for which I have a $5 credit thanks to spending $200 on books this semester; but then got to looking up The Oxford Companion to Wine which the anth. professor who taught our wine-tasting lessons last weekend says is the only wine book worth owning. I got the expensive volume in it’s second edition, rather than the current third edition, used for $5.98 & free shipping. This book is going to be a great addition in my future apartment. 

• Last minute Christmas shopping/stress/buying more things for myself than for the people on my gift list. 
• Tried Leinenkugel’s Fireside Nut Brown Beer; Blue Moon’s Winter Abbey remains the winter seasonal brews champion for me, but this might take second place. 
• Culinary Adventures: Sweet Potato & Califlower Soup, Saag
• Filipino Christmas Party
   
• Gifts with Mom and Sister = 1 Nautica Nautical Throw Blanket, 1 “Watermelon Dress,” 1 Anchor shirt, 5 pairs of underwear, 2 pairs of silk “long underwear,” a set of 4 anchor placemats for the future apartment
  
• Christmas morning = sleeping in. Breakfast = 1 fried egg, 1 banana with peanut butter & honey, 2 slices cinnamon sugar toast, & chai green tea in a mug from my Starbucks holiday collection. 
   
• Christmas early dinner with Grandma and cousin at Chinese Restaurant. This is my kind of Christmas. 
• Successfully wore “funeral formal” to every Holiday/Christmas gathering I attended. 
• Christmas exchange with A.Dew = Cool Shooters Ice Tray, Glittery Wallet/Clutch, souvenir shot glass, wool scarf. + Wine goblet decorating for New Year’s Eve + Black Swan (Swan Queen, what are you!). 
• Post-Christmas shoe shopping at Payless = 1 pair brown flats, 1 pair nude, closed-toe heels, 1 pair (nautical) navy blue wedges for $29.42. Score. 
• Finally, some snow!
• Watched Plastic Planet with sister: “These chemicals do not kill you. These chemicals harm your quality of life.” Scary. 
• $201.06 for 17 Spring semester books
• Grades in: excellent semester!
• Finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Weekend Wishlist:

• Sipping champagne from my glittery, gigantic wine glass on NYE, in my gold dress & my spirit hood with my best friends
• Fully functioning new transmission, pretty please!

• Flowers in the Attic the movie with Amanda. FABULOUS.
• TWINChristmas. Received a Ke$ha hood from Twin!!!! 
   
• The Strange Night of the Reslife Holiday parties. 
• Brunch at Southside Diner & Twintrip to Toledo!
• HOME!
• Planned trip to LA with sister - coming March 6-13, 2012
• Thrifting with sister. Bought: one sweater, one sweater dress, one Betty Boop doll for grandma, and whatever domestic ladies call these things shaped like books. 
   
• Finished reading The Scarlet Letter
• Listened to Tranquility du Jour #227: Carnism and #230: Friendship Fix. Interesting.
• Culinary Adventures: Vegetarian Spaghetti, Cranberry Guacamole
• Late night dinner with Thomas at the Irish Pub: we do not recommend the Winter Sangria, but the Pub Chips, Cornucopia Burger, and Cranberry Jack were yummy. 
• Troy Holiday Party & this dress that possibly came from the 19th century
   

Weekend Wishlist:

• Filipino Christmas Eve Party
• finally meet Jeff, Harrison, and Michael
• Culinary adventuring

• reunited with John Milton, and it feels so good
• Filipino food at Noni’s Asian Cuisine, San Miguel beer, Roebuck, Olivia & Helen :)
• Take Back the Night Carnival
• Online shoe shopping all night
• The four-week UNDEFEATED Detroit Lions!
• Gourdzilla, the 1048 pound pumpkin!
• Home!!!
• Woodchuck Pumpkin Hard Cider
• Thrifting successes: Trenchcoat, North Face jacket, navy blue corduroys, nude colored low heels, Tweed blazer, 100% wool frock for winter, two clutches, Strawberry Shortcake hat, red belt = $31. HEY!
• Hanging out with Thomas: Cupcake Date (Pumpkin Chocolate Chip!), Mexican food & Sangria, mmm; The Top 5 list of most entertaining dinners together in the last four years. 

Weekend Wishlist:

• Hanging out with mom
• The high school football game
• Finishing Honors proposal

• Found Cupcake Vineyards Chiffon Vodka in the liquor store. Yummyumyum.
• Great haircut
• Back To School Shopping and Thrifting
• Cauliflower-Sweet Potato Soup with White Zinfandel
• Pretty dresses
• Pizza & Singapore Slings with Thomas at Jojo’s Pizza
• Shark Bite Sangria to end Shark Week and Breakfast at Tiffany’s
• Five-year old child in Grandma’s neighborhood said “Hi! You’re pretty!” to me as I walked up from my car :)
• Dark chocolate cake with peaches, amaretto and an almond topping, mmmm.
• Handling best friend crises
• Dinner and Drinks with Best Friends
• Cupcake Date at Cake in a Cup
• Move-in day at Kenyon and CA Training…CPR certification, too!
• Porch-sitting and Taco bell on a 55 degree summer night :)

Weekend Wishlist:

• Sleeping and reading
• Decorating my residence hall

That is all. 

So, the nice thing about back to school shopping by the time you reach senior year of college is that you don’t really need to buy all that much (in theory). All of my books were purchased online and are waiting for me at the Gambier Post Office. I’ve spent four years accumulating all of the things I need for dorm life. And I have enough overflow in the area of school supplies that this year, I will not be buying any. On my back to school list this year I have the toiletries I will need; a few foodstuffs to keep me company while I am away from home-cooked meals; nude-colored high heels and dresses for semi-formal events and graduation, the things I set out to buy this very weekend. It’s going to be dinnertime in about an hour and I’ve pretty much completed my list, YAY! and the grand total for the clothing items? $57.26. Amazing!

1. Two dresses from Deb on the “Take an additional 50% off the lowest ticket price” rack. The blue one was $14.99 (orig. 79.99!) and the pink one was $7.50 (orig. 39.99). Talk about a steal! And nude colored canvas wedges from JC Penny, $16.39. I’m still looking for patent pumps in the same color, but the wedges are great, too. 

2. Two dresses from the Goodwill, $5 each. The first has a tag that read size 7/8 so I was worried, but whoever owned it in the past must have had it taken in since it fit my size 4/5 body perfectly. The second is some labelless, tagless number that has to be from the 80s. It screamed “I wish I was born in the Victorian Era!” at me and I was sooo excited that it fit. Plus, I bought a wine glass with the City of Toledo seal on it (whoo hometown souvenir!) and I bought a souvenir glass from the Rainforest Cafe in Chicago (can you believe I nearly bought a $17 alcoholic beverage there last December in order to get one of these?!) for 50 cents a piece. 

3. Six items from Plato’s Closet’s clearance rack, which I got for the huge bargain price of $1 each!!! Another black party dress, an over-sized t-shirt with some iconic ladies faces on it, a heavy, wool, houndstooth frock for the winter months, a purple bubble skirt with black lace over top, wool shorts for the transition from summer to fall, and a knee-length red satin skirt. 

And now I celebrate my shopping success by cooking Cauliflower-Sweet Potato Stew and drinking White Zin from my new wine glass and watch the Red Sox kick Yankee ass. YAY!!

1. Bad Omen: dropping the bag with new kindle inside on the snowy porch while trying to unlock the house door. 

2. ACCESS to the Oxford English Dictionary when not on college campus - HELLO, you are worth your $139+tax already!

3. The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Kindle Edition $0.99. OMG Jane and I can go everywhere together!

4. Not reading on my computer or printing PDFs of Dante’s Purgatorio (250 pgs), The Trial and Death of Socrates (40 pgs), or The Epic of Gilgamesh (30 gs), and carrying Hacker’s MLA updates with me like this. 

Long story short, I am in love. New mission is to buy one of those cute little cases that make it look like a book!

I mean, like in eighth grade until approximately junior year of high school…I remember that because I haven’t grown since then so I have a whole drawer full of them and I usually wear them on laundry days. BUT! I’ve gotten on this new kick of cutting them into tank tops and they look great! Bringing their strange graphic tee-ness back into style just in time for winter…! Go me!

Every Friday, don’t be late.