9.01.2013

Things I Can Talk Voluably About for Extended Periods of Time, But That Only Have a Limited Audience

In no particular order:

-The dairy industry
-Raw milk, specifically
-Chris Thile
-The process, science, and history behind wool felting
-Tiny houses
-Straw bale construction
-Compost
-Composting toilets
-Food policy
-Libraries
-L.M. Montgomery
-Louisa May Alcott
-John Green
-Audiobooks
-Edible gardening/landscaping
-Herbal remedies
-Public radio
-Saturday Night Live
-Arrested Development
-Bread baking methods
-Various oddities of various animals
-Youtube
-Cats
-Natural history and art museums
-US Education policy and it's deep, deep flaws
-Montessori/Waldorf education
-YA fiction
-The Dewey Decimal System

This is absurd.

8.12.2013

Want to lose weight? Use these tried-and-true 20th century solutions for the every-day, career-minded employed-professional

http://www.google.com/imgres?start=473&um=1&sa=N&rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS395US395&hl=en&authuser=0&biw=1280&bih=713&tbm=isch&tbnid=fODQPADssHYdRM:&imgrefurl=http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/03/health/healthy-diet-birth-defects&docid=OnaxAs6KuqD-XM&imgurl=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/111003065423-healthy-diet-birth-defects-story-top.jpg&w=640&h=360&ei=CJMJUo2uK8rkyAGS1YCADA&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:78,s:400,i:238&iact=rc&page=24&tbnh=168&tbnw=300&ndsp=20&tx=170&ty=115

  • Eat only egg whites, the least nutritious and tasteless part of the egg. These are best consumed pre-de-yoked out of cardboard cartons
  • Instead of eating fewer Oreos, eat only the half with the frosting and throw the other half away
  • Unless you know the exact caloric content of every facet of all ingredients, the meal is not worth eating and is, in fact, dangerous and highly suspect.
  • When preparing toast, eat only the slices of bread that are not symmetrical on both sides, crust-wise. Only butter (excuse me, margarine or margarine substitute or similar) the smaller side, so as to consume fewer calories.
  • When drinking coffee, add only pre-sweetened, shelf-stable cream-product, as actual cream is essentially poison, as is every dairy product other than skim milk. (NOTE: skim milk should only be consumed on Sundays)
  • Preparing meals from scratch is overly dangerous, as farmers do not provide adequate nutritional data along with their organic kale and carrots (see third bullet).  **Stay tuned for the change.org petition.**
  • Plain rice cakes should be kept on one's person at all times, with extras in the glove compartment of your car.
  • Only chew sugarless gum
  • Use only 0 calorie toothpaste
  • Under no circumstances should you actually consume a cinnamon roll. Not only will this lead to an appreciation of cinnamon rolls, it also is a gateway into the dangerous world of the cinnamon challenge.
  • Be advised that calories, when consumed healthfully, only come in increments of 100.
  • Should you be tempted to drink anything other than sparkling water, pomegranate juice, or FiberPlus, wash your mouth out with soap.
  • Bread will literally kill you. Pasta will only sometimes kill you.

8.08.2013

Itinerantly Wandering the Midwest

This has been a very... MUCH summer. It's not even over yet, and it already holds several [Ellen] World Records. For instance, this summer I have:

-Been to and slept in six states: Iowa, Alaska, Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
-Slept in 17 beds
-Lived out of a suitcase for 71 days
-Driven many, many miles, more than I care to count.
-Visited two new states, Alaska and Washington
-Driven in big-city traffic (I had to let go of a lot of anger)

Not in the realm of records:
-I flew for the first time completely alone and unassisted
-Stayed in a hotel on a spur-of-the-moment whim of flight authorities
-Did many and varied things completely out of my comfort zone
-Moved my life around three separate times
-Moved to a state and moved out again within three weeks
-Made dozens of new friends
-Went to ALA for the first, and I can't imagine the last time
-Read lots of new books
-Got three new library cards
-Graduated college
-Got tonsillitis
-Ate tapas
-Took a plane, train, and automobile, in that order, in one day

But yes, it's been a muchly much summer. For those of you keeping score at home (and by home I mean Facebook), you've been privy to the exciting adventure of me Moving For Good, and then saying Oh No Wait I Am Going Somewhere Else Haha Faked You Out (how do people type that way all the time, capitalizing every word? It's exhausting).

What happened was I moved to Madison, because Madison is where I'm going to library school. I hadn't deferred yet, because I was kind of anticipating digging up a mass of gold or finding a sizeable chunk of ambergris or something like that, but unfortunately that didn't happen and I decided to defer school for a year. Not a big deal, this way I can get in-state tuition and save money and possibly get other awesome funding (preferably in the form of an on-campus job like a TA or something). In the meantime, I decided to look for a job and an apartment in Madison, so I could stay for the year. Unfortunately, nothing at all was panning out: no jobs responded to me (except for the movie theatre, where the interview generated a good story and worse impression, remind me to tell you when we have coffee next), none of the apartments I saw were terribly habitable or in my price range, and it was proving to be a daunting task to get to know people when I A. knew no one else and B. don't do anything that people generally do in club or group form.

So! I remembered that Minnesota has a reciprocal tuition agreement with Wisconsin, where if you are a resident of one you get practically in-state tuition in the other. After a lot of thought and a lot of people telling me I was not, in fact, a crazed lunatic for proposing the idea, I decided to move to the Twin Cities for the year. Papa was gracious enough to send out some networking emails (a new concept to me. My net experience with networking is meeting people and saying "Oh my gosh, you like that thing too? Let's be friends, here's my twitter account") and in about two days I had a place to live lined up an a job interview. That was on a Wednesday, and the interview was on Tuesday, so I decided to move on the next Monday. And  then I did. That night I got a call about interviewing at Barnes and Noble as well. Needless to say, it was a bit of a whirlwind. But here I am, both interviews went well, I found a very nice bakery, and my bike gets to live indoors. Everybody lives, Rose, just this once.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm still going to grad school in Madison, just next year)

Picture time!:

Being impatient in the Seattle airport after my stuffy ears and my aviation inexperience caused me to miss my connecting flight. Spoiler, everything turned out okay.


Later that same day, but in Alaska with food in my stomach. Amanda took me to the Mendenhall Glacier and we probably almost saw a bear on the trail.

I spent an wonderful and absurd amount of time in Chicago, except it was all split up and never all at once. This is by Lake Michigan when it was all foggy and lovely out.


During one of the trips I went to the ALA conference. They had different musical acts just wandering around the convention center on each day. The first day was a mini-marching band. To see a super coincidental video of me taking this picture, click here.


I turned 22, along with my Grandma. I love sharing my birthday with one of the coolest women in my life! We had a great time and went shopping and out to lunch and everything.


Another one of my adventures was farm-sitting for a professor for three days. They have  eating chickens and egg chickens and eating ducks and baby ducks and egg ducks and cats and a dog, not to mention their expansive garden and strawberry patch. Needless to say, I was in heaven:). This is the take for the day, egg-wise. Two of the eggs are blue, and the big white one in the corner is a duck egg. I pretty much existed off of eggs, toast, peas, and strawberries for the week. Absolutely zero regrets.



We had Cousins Camp at the beginning of July, and as you can see in the picture we carried on the tradition of Diet Coke and Mentos. There were 11 of us this year, and it was completely wonderful from start to finish! A little lower-key than previous Cousins Camps, but we all enjoyed hanging around the farm a little more, turning gallons and gallons of water into balloons, eating lots of ice cream, and flying our kites.

Soon after that I moved to Madison, and now here I am in Minneapolis. Like I keep telling Papa, I'm sure I'll be off to Namibia any day now.

In all seriousness, I actually feel really peaceful about being here. When I got to Madison I cried practically every day, which I assumed to be me just doing my thing and figuring out the whole Living On My Own thing and moving and whatever, so I wasn't too concerned. But starting on the day that I decided to come to the Cities, I haven't cried once, and I've simply felt good and reasonable about the entire enterprise. Probably a good sign.

Now: I need to save up money to go see A Prairie Home Companion and tick that off my list.



5.06.2013

What I'm digging

I dig a lot of things, among them Ashley English's blog Small Measure. Every week she makes a post of all the things she's been digging lately. I thought I'd do the same!

This is my garden being tilled. I can't believe it's getting ready to be actually done! The weather has been so crazy this year, first too cold, then too wet, just all over the place. Thankfully it got tilled right before yet another big rain storm, so everything is doing great. We're doubling digging some beds, and getting a lot more structure in place for future years. It's going to be SWEET.


We did Rite of Spring again this year. My friend Andrew came again, and we were all suitably crazy and painted and wet at the end. 

I've been dying a lot of slippers recently, because that's all I've been making, because they're super easy and cute and everyone likes slippers! These were for Molly. I dyed them a really neat blue, and then dyed some roving orange to make a carrot on them. I'll try and take a picture to post soon. 

These are two of my suitemates, Tim and Danny, right after their last Jazz Band concert! It was wonderful, and they played TWO encores. 

This is my friend Molly. She's awesome.
This is my roommate Courtney with a chicken. We have a lot of really cool adventures together.




This is my view from a hammock on campus. Beautiful!

So, briefly, that's what I've been digging recently! What are you all up to?


4.16.2013

What is Ellen up to? A Frequently Asked Questions guide




Job:
Ellen enjoys working at the library. Once a boy asked her to recycle a single staple and it was hilarious. She completes many projects, but the two most exciting have been buying $1,000 worth of e-books and helping with the digitization of the college archives.

Grad school:
Ellen got into graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study Library Science. She isn’t sure if she’ll go in the fall because of money reasons, but she really would like to. If she does not go in the fall she’ll look for jobs in the greater Wisconsin/Minnesota area for a year in order to get in-state tuition. If she does go to school she will start orientation the last week in August, with classes starting September 3rd.

Class:
Ellen is currently in her 7th block at Cornell, in a low-level biology course called “Sex and Food”. This SOUNDS really exciting and provocative, but really it’s all about evolution and miosis. She has two tests and very little homework. Her professor is really wonderful, studies the sexual activity and evolution of fruit flies, and is pretty crazy (but in a wonderful sort of way). She does not want to graduate for sentimental and academic reasons, but is still looking forward to new things. (Update: She is now in 8th block Senior Seminar for Education, and is writing about introversion and collaboration in the classroom).

Car:
Ellen recently bought a 2003 Hyundai Elantra from Dan Deery’s in Cedar Falls after looking for eight months. After taking it to a trusted mechanic, she bartered for it with a nice man at the dealership and paid a fair but not ideal price for it. It has around 70,500 miles on it, and gets 32mpg highway. It is grey with a purple cast to it, and she enjoys it greatly.

Men:
Ellen is not currently involved with anyone at the moment. She had a crush on a boy but it turned out that he had only ever been to the school library once, so she dropped him.

Summer Plans:
Ellen does not currently know her summer plans, beyond traveling to Alaska in May. She may stay in Mount Vernon and live with a professor’s dogs while he and his family are on a research trip in Oregon, or she may move to her new job (see: Grad school).

Garden:
The garden is doing well, granted that it stops raining soon so she can get it tilled and get everything put in. The new gardeners are wonderful, and she is only having sort of a hard time letting go.