The road is my middle name

Winter break was a whirlwind - I spent a few days in Chicago, then packed up my friend's car and headed southwest. After some less-than-ideal weather in the Ozarks, dullness in Oklahoma and the terrible traffic in Dallas, we pulled into Austin for a few days with another old friend. She showed us a grand ol' time, which mostly involved extensive amounts of eating. Austin has crazy good food, dudes. Like, ridiculously good. Like, I've-been-dreaming-about-it good. The tacos alone were reason enough to move there. And don't even get me started on the gourmet doughnut truck! And the cupcake truck... even me, hater of the frou-frou cupcake trend, was charmed!


And the shopping - I have never so badly wanted a pair of cowboy boots as I did during the thirty minutes we spent perusing the shelves of Allen's Boots.


Obviously, these shoes and I are meant to be - I just have to dig up a spare six hundred bucks somewhere. Easy-peasy, right?


Even the store signage was amazing!


My love of tacos and cowboy boots aside, Austin was phenomenal. After a weekend, though, the road started calling us, so we piled back into the car and drove west across the gorgeous sandy emptiness of west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The sunset outside of El Paso was particularly stunning, even with all the traffic:


Soon, though, we were dying to return home, and even the rain in Southern California couldn't dampen our excitement about being back in the Golden State. We celebrated with date shakes in Palm Springs:


After a near-disastrous break-pad experience, we pulled into Los Angeles for a night with Isaac and Lizz who wined and dined in the glamorous manner to which we would love to have become accustomed. Revived with a delicious dinner at Good Girl Dinette and a deep night's sleep, we decided to take on the torrential downpour and headed for the Grapevine. Six hours and eight chapters of Stephen Fry's autobiographical audiobook later, we were pulling into the 'rents home in friendly old Berkeley.

And so, after a week and a half on the road, three weeks in the warm embrace of my family, and two weddings, I returned to the great state of Delaware for winter term. Not for long, though - this weekend I take off for two weeks in London with my graduate cohort for a trip the Winterthur program refers to as "History of English Design" but that I prefer to think of as The "So, You Think You Like Museums? THINK AGAIN" Tour of 2011. Ah, the life of the international jet-setter.

out and about

So, things have been crazy-awesome lately, and while I don't have time to go into details right now (I'm supposed to be on the train to work at this moment), I will say this: Hawaii is so freaking beautiful and the week my roommates and I spent there at the end of February probably saved me from committing ritual suicide over Chicago's winter.


More to come, eventually.

Give me Kitchen Aid or give me death.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I was a senior in college, contemplating writing an honors thesis. Eventually it became clear to me that I would not be able to write it and still hold on to my sanity. I came to this realization over winter break and promptly called my roommate back in Atlanta, a little appalled and nervous. Our conversation went something like this:

S: "I don't think I'm going to be writing my thesis."
C: "hmmm, that's interesting."
S: "no, really!"
C: "yes, I heard you."
S: "what, aren't you shocked? Why are you so calm about this? WHY ARE YOU NOT MAKING SURPRISED NOISES?"
S: "Oh, I'm sorry, was this supposed to be news? I knew this would happen."
S: "How? I'm writing the damn thing and I didn't even know! How could you?"
C: "Over the past semester, you baked scones, cakes, chocolate croissants, more scones, tarts, cookies, brownies, and cupcakes. Every time you were supposed to be writing your thesis, you were baking. You even made cupcakes that looked like anatomically correct hearts. THEY HAD VENTRICLES AND EVERYTHING. Clearly, the thesis wasn't going to get written."
S: "..."

And that is how my very observant roommate diagnosed me as a stress baker.

So yeah, stress baking. Apparently I do it. And I must be extraordinarily anxious about SOMETHING, because I have been baking up a storm lately. Some people have requested pictures, so here they are a few of my creations (please excuse the poor quality - if this is food porn, it's clearly of the homemade sex tape variety):


Cupcake kuchen, or cupkuchen, for July 4. I used strawberries and bluberries to get a nice red/white/blue thing going, but none of the people at the party I brought them to seemed to care. Clearly, they aren't patriots.


And then there was the mini peach galette:


It was sort of an after-thought, actually; we had leftover tart dough from a tomato onion tart my roommates had made and some peaches that weren't used up in a peach/apricot kuchen I had made early that week. I wasn't sure what to do for the filling, so it was basically just sliced peaches coated with brown sugar and patted down with butter. I've since done some other, more intentional galettes (apple, mostly) but so far this has come out the prettiest.

Now, this next one has a story (surprising, right?). I have never feared cupcakes, or brownies, or scones. I faced down pan au chocolat with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Even pie dough, with all it's finickiness, doesn't frighten me too badly. But cakes? Especially layer cakes? As far as I can tell, they were created by the devil to confound me. At least that's what I've thought for the past few years, culminating in my spectacular layer cake failure from November, on election night. I tried to make a double-layer chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. I was going to decorate it to look like the Obama logo! It was going to symoblize the meeting of black and white in this historic election! That last part is bullshit, but honestly, I was a little high on hope and baking fumes.

Well, this is how it looked for a split second (you can see that I cheated and used packaged colored frosting... I'm sorry, baking gods!):


And one second later, all hell breaks lose:


Basically, I'm a Cake Killer. Or so I thought, until I decided to face my fears and tackle a three-layer red velvet to bring to a going-away party for my friend Jing. I did some research, found the best layer cake advice from Deb from Smitten Kitchen, and produced three of these:


Which turned into this:


Which, if you can't tell, is three gorgeous layers of red velvet separated by two layers of cream cheese frosting and spackled with a crumb layer. And, in one of the most triumphant moments of my young adult life (I aim low), all of that became this:


Oooh, I get all weepy just thinking about it. I mean, you have to ignore the wonky writing - clearly I don't exactly have the art of decorating down just yet. Still, pretty cool for my first three layer cake, right?

I've since made a three-layer yellow cake with lemon cream cheese frosting and lemon curd/blackberry compote filling, a few more kuchens, and two (!!) fruit pies. I'm pretty proud of myself, but my roommates are starting to go a little sugar-crazy. Given how stressed out this means I am, I should probably seek therapy. But hey, flour and sugar are cheaper, right?

One man's trash is another man's castle, one man's castle is another man's outrageously-decorated monstrosity

I'm feeling a little weird about the fact that I'm leaving Milford in less than a week; I'm exciting to be heading home (my big bed! my lovely sheets! cable! INTERNET!) but also sad to be leaving Grey Towers (my rustic farmhouse! work I really love! old objects!) and I am really, truly, wholeheartedly terrified about not having a job. So, because my whole brain is consumed by this mixture of excitement, wistfulness, and full-fledged panic, I don't have many words to spare for this blog post. What I do have, though, are pictures!

This post has been a long time coming. How can I write about Grey Towers if I never post a single picture of the building? So here it is, in all its goofy, fake-castle-y glory.


Of course, I've written about the turrets - I've even, dare I say it, waxed poetic about them. But what about the interiors, say you? Well, Grey Towers is used by the Forest Service as both a museum and meeting center for conservation conferences, so its multiple floors are put to multiple uses. The first floor is made up of the historic museum rooms and offices (in the servants' wing, of course), and the second and third floors are conference rooms and more offices. The interesting rooms, therefore, are all on the first floor, and that's what I have pictures of. My office is actually on the third floor, tucked under the eaves, but while it sounds super-romantic that mostly means that I occasionally hit my head on the sloping ceiling.

But anyway, the interior! When you enter the house from the front door (which we never do... staff/servants' entrance, dontchya' know) you step into the great hall, a huge wood-paneled room filled with heavy Dutch and Italian Renaissance furniture. It is very, very dark. The most interesting part of the great hall is the inglenook, which sits to the left of the main entrance. Here it is:


Like I said, dark. Also, yes, that is a stuffed owl clutching a stuffed squirrel in its sharp little claws. It is pretty strange. On either side of the owl are stag heads mounted to the walls. Here is the one to the right of the owl (who I call Hooty, of course):


I can't tell you much about the sailor's cap, except that it is entirely historically accurate. The restoration, done in the 1990s, used historic photos to recreate the furnishings and look of every room. Every historic photo of the great hall dating back to the early 1920s showed the sailor's cap sitting on top of the stag's antlers. We don't know how it got there, but I like to think of it as further proof of the fact that Cornelia Pinchot was a hilariously tacky but amazing decorator.

The library is probably my favorite room. You enter it from a door on the right wall of the great hall. Originally two very small rooms (a billiards room for the gentlemen and a sitting room for the ladies), Cornelia tore out the wall between the rooms when she married Gifford and paneled the walls in wooden bookshelves to make it a library. Here is the part of the room that used to be the ladies' sitting room:


We have a number of lovely empire sofas in the house, but this one is my favorite - the arm rests are high enough that it almost feels like a box.

Across from the sofa is a huge painting of Mary Pinchot, Gifford's mother, sitting with Gifford and his little sister Antoinette. He had another sister, Lucy, who died as a baby and a younger brother, Amos, who wasn't yet born when the portrait was painted. I consider the official family painting that is missing Amos to be further proof that Amos was really the black sheep of the family. Certainly Gifford got the better house and furnishings, and even though Amos was quite accomplished (he founded an organization that was the precursor to the ACLU, and was a noted lawyer who worked for equal rights and fought to free Sacco and Vanzetti, among others) the whole family clearly had the highest hopes for Gifford. My housemate Shannon and I would often hear something really complimentary about Gifford and say to each other, "sucks to be Amos, though." Anyway, the painting was done in Europe and cost $12,000 which is more than half of what the entire house took to build.


There is a door to the right of this photo that leads to the sitting room. The sitting room is arguably Cornelia's greatest contribution to the house (or at least the interior of the house - she was also responsible for the entire landscaping project, as well as the addition of multiple outbuildings to the property) and you can get a good sense of her design aesthetic from a look at the sitting room:


And by "design aesthetic," I mean "her way of throwing crazy colors on the walls and stuffing a room full of mismatched furniture and calling it "decorated."" I mean, really, this woman was AWESOME. I can sort of imagine her stomping through the house, a team of assistants behind her coughing as they inhaled the smoke trailing from her thin french cigarette as she claimed in her patrician voice, "Nooooo, sea green walls are nothing without red velvet drapes and some lovely fake marble trim! Nothing, I tell you! Have you no imagination? No joie de vivre? You must think of this house as a caterpillar, and we are the chrysalis process that will turn it into a beautiful butterfly! Be the chrysalis!!" Or something to that effect.

The large expanses of walls in the sitting room not covered with mirrors, candelabras, or mounted fish are papered with huge murals of Dutch seascapes and farm scenes. The murals were painted onto canvases which were then plastered like wallpaper onto the walls. Cornelia found the paintings in the Hague and insisted that they be brought over to line her sitting room walls, completing the maritime theme she had going. When the Forest Service took over the house in 1963 they claimed that most of the paintings were too damaged to restore, so they just painted over them. I've since heard conflicting stories (that the Forest Service just didn't want to pay for them to be fixed, or that they didn't feel they were appropriate for the house, etc.) but whatever the reason, most of the paintings had to be re-created for the restoration. One wall was saved, though, and the mural on it is original:


So those are the three main historic rooms. There is also Gifford's office, which sits in one of the towers off the corner of the library - I mention it because it has one of my favorite pieces in it, a lovely and strangely delicate Federal-style desk. Also, the wallpaper is goofy:


Gifford's bedroom is the only historic room on the second floor, but I couldn't be bothered to document it. It is a small tower room, and his bed is bizarrely little, especially when you consider that he never lived there as a child. He and Cornelia had separate rooms, as was the style of the times, but still... weirdly tiny bed.

So yeah, that is the interior of Grey Towers! I guess I had more to say than I thought, but hopefully the photographs made up for my senseless babbling.

I'm leaving Milford in six days, so if you're in the SF Bay Area and want to see me, I'm home November 7! Otherwise, stay tuned - I'll try to post some more before I leave.

Im in ur forestz, preventing ur firez

Fun fact: Smokey Bear, contrary to what many of us were taught during Junior Ranger activities at national parks during family camping trips*, is NOT a creation of of the National Park Service but rather of the Forest Service. Smokey was created as a public service mascot on August 9, 1944 (his birthday!) and was eventually physically embodied by a black bear that was rescued from a fire in 1950. He is actually the longest running public service campaign in American history. Take that, Scruff McGruff.

Second fun fact: Smokey Bear's name is Smokey Bear - there is no "the" in it. Funny, right?

Third fun fact: at sites like Grey Towers, where a lot of what goes on is conservation education for both adults AND children, the Forest Service often supplies a "Smokey Suit" to create a real-life Smokey for activities. And sometimes, miracles happen and interns are required to wear the suit. See below for proof:

Smokey, yes?


But who can that be animating our one true forest protector?


WHY YES I DID GET TO DRESS UP AS SMOKEY BEAR AND PLAY WITH FOUR-YEAR-OLD KIDS. YES IT WAS AWESOME, WHY DO YOU ASK?

Of course, I couldn't move my head with the head-part on and I couldn't see through the eyes so I had to be led around by another ranger, but still, it was quite possibly the most awesome thing ever.

*Don't lie, I know at least some of you did junior rangers; if your last name is Resnikoff, it was practically a right of passage. Endless campfire activities with some goofy chipper Ranger learning to identify bird calls and practicing your safe-camping rules. Good times, mosquito bites and all.

Down home on the farm

As I've mentioned before, Grey Towers is located in the cute little hamlet of Milford, PA. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere so charming, and having been in both North Berkeley and Decatur, GA, I think that is saying something. But really, this place is amazing. Beautiful historic houses, shady streets, friendly neighbors... the works. What makes it even better, though, is that it isn't all gingerbread trim and well-groomed lawns. Yeah, there are a lot of summer residents who raise the value of the property and bring things like organic free-range eggs and absurdly expensive restaurants to town, but there are enough locals with dirty pickups living in crumbling Victorians with Mets flags outside to make the town feel real and alive. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to take pictures of all the buildings and neighborhoods (all 1 and 1/2 of them) that I love, but here is a preview:


Cute sign, right? Also, the town was officially founded twenty years after America declared independence. I'm not sure, but I think that might make it the oldest place I've ever lived.

While I do not have pictures of Milford just yet, I do have a couple of Grey Towers and my farmhouse. Here is Grey Towers from the path that winds from the parking pavilion to the house. (To get from my house to the mansion, I trample through the woods until I hit the pavilion, and then I join the footpath and make my way up. It is a pretty easy commute, but sometimes the traffic gets ugly when the squirrels start going at it.)


The angle of the picture keeps you from seeing it, but that ivy covers the wall that forms the moat. Yes, Grey Towers has a moat. It doesn't go all the way around the house, unfortunately, but still... a moat! Also, that weird brown blob in the middle of the second story is a bust of Lafayette. The Pinchot's were French - Gifford's grandfather and great-grandfather were huge supporters of Napoleon who got out while the going was good once they saw that the Bourbons were going to be restored. The design of Grey Towers is actually based on Lafayette's chateau, Le Grange.

As to why it is called Grey Towers, find out for yourself:


WHY YES, WE DO HAVE TURRETS. My favorite architectural feature EVER, probably due to too many viewings of Beauty and the Beast as a young child. The third floor tower room is right near my office, and when I need to do some reading, (you know, like a historic structure report, or the historic furnishings list, or maybe a complete account EVERY item Cornelia Pinchot ever purchased - your usual light entertainment reading) I like to hide out up there in the big easy chair. I've only nodded off once.

When I'm not vacuuming historic furnishings or reading old receipts in a turret, I spend my free time in the farmhouse on the property. It is apparently the oldest structure still standing in the park, and it predates Grey Towers by a good fifty+ years. It isn't worth taking pictures of the inside, which was gutted 20 years ago and re-done in industrial-housing chic, but the outside is pretty great.


Here is the large porch. The window on the left is my bedroom window, and to the right is the kitchen. My housemate Shannon has the upstairs bedroom.

And here is the side that you see (sort of) when you come up the road:


And this is my BACKYARD:


The creek runs right behind the house, and for the first couple days I always thought it was raining outside because of the noise.

Finally, I want you to meet the newest resident of the farmhouse, Sadie:


Sadie is shiny and red. Sadie is beautiful. Sadie is also a piece of crap bicycle. But she's MY piece of crap bicycle, and considering that I walked five miles to the closest Wal-Mart to buy her, I'm feeling pretty attached. Which is actually a shame, given that she doesn't seem too attached to me. Or at least that is what her unwillingness to shift gears and tendancy to try to throw me off of her rocking seat when we go over the smallest bump seems to say. Still, old men always compliment me on my "neat ride" when I take her into town, so I guess there is a silver lining to the bicycle debacle.

Would you like some letterpress with your handmade paper?

I've spent the last six (?) weeks working at an awesome place, run by awesome people, and I've decided to tell the internets about it.

Twig & Fig is a custom letterpress studio in Berkeley on Vine and Walnut (they are kitty-corner to the goofy cupcake place in Walnut Square.) We design and print custom wedding invites, bar/bat invites, do personal stationary, business cards, etc. We letterpress almost all aspects of the copy and images on the product, which means using a lot of old and supercool machinery. And I say "we" when I write all this because until three days ago, I worked there. And it was the most enjoyable summer job I've ever had.

No, really - paper is interesting, and letterpress is beautiful, and working with interesting and beautiful materials in a pleasant environment with fun and engaging people can apparently make being employed so much more enjoyable than I ever would have imagined.

I'm leaving for Pennsylvania for three months tomorrow, so I thought I'd post a few pictures (and a little surprise) to remember T&F by:


This is the design studio/kitchen/break room (that is my Coke Zero on the table!) and also a great shot of Suzie's back as she does important design-y work. Suzie is a co-owner of Twig & Fig with her husband, Serge. They are both very neat people (neat as in cool, not neat as in organized, although they are).


Below is where T&Fers meet with clients to discuss jobs or show off the pretty, pretty things they have made.


Twig & Fig's primary business is making beautiful custom invitations and stationary, but they also have a storefront that sells a mishmash of things—mostly letterpressed materials and other stationary-related goods. When I wasn't working on production for a job I sometimes manned the store. We got a lot of customers coming in and getting huffy because maybe we didn't have the exact Moleskine they wanted or perhaps I was on the phone with a client and couldn't help them immediately. There was always the temptation to look them in the eye and go, "listen, pal, you are small potatoes. The person on the phone wants two hundred wedding invitations encrusted with crystals and printed on paper woven from the wool of a baby lamb, and you want to buy a five dollar card. Surely you see the difference?" But, of course, I said nothing of the sort. Because, as we all know, I am the soul of sweetness and light. The store really is fun, though, and the stuff in it is beautiful:


Behind the storefront is the print shop, where the actual production of a job is done. There are two printing presses - one from 1890 and one from 1973. Surprisingly, Serge does most of the printing on the 1890 press, and it is a beauty to watch in action.


I spent a lot of time back here, working on all manner of projects. I have become the master of the adhesive gun, and midieval scribes cower at my wax-sealing skills. Also, I am a mean envelope maker:


The printing press makes quite a racket in the print shop, but it becomes soothing after a while, the steady chu-chunk chu-chunk of the machine setting the pace for the room. Here is Serge, running the press (hint: this is a moving picture):


So that was my summer, spent frolicking among the response cards and "directions to our special events" sheets. Thank you to Suzie, Serge, Holly and Michelle for making sure I had an amazing summer. Everyone else, be sure to visit T&F sometime soon, if only to nag the girl at the counter about Moleskine notebooks.

Getting Up to Speed

So, things that have happened since the last time I posted (in no particular order):
I turned 22
I learned to like (or at least choke down) beer
I graduated college
I interviewed in New York for jobs at auction houses and began to hyperventilate at the thought of moving to the city
I didn't get the jobs at the auction houses, making all my hyperventilating a waste
I graduated college
I baked scones
I baked more scones
I baked even more scones
I baked pain au chocolate
I graduated college
I got a red bike!
I moved out of my apartment and out of Atlanta
72 hours later, I moved out of my house in Berkeley and into a house in Albany
I baked rugelach
I baked pinapple upside down cupcakes
I applied for a million jobs
I went to a lot of parties
I studied
I stopped writing my thesis
I graduated

Somewhere in there I also slept, ate things that weren't baked, shopped, read, hung out with friends, and went to class, but you get the idea.

This past semester was crazy. It was my last, which made it poignant, but I don't think I realized just how final it was until graduation. I'm glad of that - it meant that there wasn't very much, "oh, I have to do everything before graduation" talk. Sure there was some - I doubt I would have consumed as much PBR as I did if I hadn't been thinking that - but I think my friends and I were pretty good about doing things because we WANTED to do them, not because it was our last chance ever, omg, end of the world, etc.

To go along with the random list above, I give you a photographic account of Shoshana's Spring Semester, 2008 (also in no particular order):
C and M 22 at around the same time, so they threw a joint birthday party which is was pretty crazy. On C's actual birthday, though, we went out to Cafe Intermezzo, a silly European-style coffee house and dessert bar. I say silly because it obviously thinks too highly of itself, but man, those desserts are killer. In fact, its probably one of my favorite places to eat sweet things. What you see in the picture below is me, intensely examining their dessert display while a Intermezzo Cake Expert (my term) guides me through my options. I had a lot of questions, so it took awhile.


Earlier in the month there was a crazy snow storm. Friday and Saturday were both completely snowed-in, and neighborhood kids (and adults) went crazy building snowmen and sledding down some very sad hills. Snow is so rare in Atlanta that we all got caught up in the excitement of what was, to be honest, a very sad little snowfall. Here are E and A dancing outside the Target Greatland (oh, my home away from home) enjoying the snow (its the gray haze behind us.)


I lived with a Protestant and two Catholics and I happen to love breakfast food, so I couldn't let Fat Tuesday (also known as Shrove Tuesday) go by without a pancake. C and I made crepes with nutella to have as a study break snack, and C even managed to find Polish doughnuts at the grocery store. Apparently they are only available around Shrove Tuesday. There must be some sort of Shrove Tuesday magic, too, because by Wednesday they tasted disgusting. Below E and I make faces at the pancakes,and the camera.


Suddenly it was March, and along with that came my birthday. I was home for spring break on the actual day and Isaac made the trip up to celebrate with me. He, my mom, and I went to Copia in Napa and then to a winery, followed by dinner with Kiva, Grandma, and Eva and Janusz. It was all very Northern California yuppie. Copia, if you didn't know, is subtitled "the center for wine, food, and the arts," and it is the very soul of bougie. A museum-cum-monument to Nor-Cal lifestyle, it elevates foodies and gourmands to the level of history-makers. I, of course, ate it all up. Here my mom and I stand, like greek statuary, next to the enormous urns made out of bottle caps that grace a grand quote by Robert Mondavi engraved in the marble at the entrance of Copia. I feel very epic, and yet very foolish.


Back in Atlanta I had a small party for my friends. My roommates, being the glorious people they are, actually bought me a gold brocade cape for my birthday. A CAPE. Its always good to know who my true friends are, and now I have the perfect standard of measure: would they buy me an absurd, useless item of costume-y clothing? If the answer is "no," then I really shouldn't be hanging out with them. Here I am, trying on the cape and unable to contain my excitement:


C and A were trying to help me get it on but I think the ridiculousness of the situation became too much for A. I can't tell if she's laughing or about to vomit, but if its the second then it must be vomit of happiness. Below is M and I at the party as I wear the cape nonchalantly, as if there is nothing weird about being wrapped in several pounds of heavy gold brocade:


At some point L and Z came to visit. They actually came separately - L and I had been planning her visit out since high school graduation so cruelly separated us, and Z and her friend K just happened to be driving through from Chicago to Florida for their spring break. Z and K got in right at the end of L's visit, so I had some time with each of them. Here are L and I at the statue of the weird flying children in Decatur Square. Decatur is a cute little town right next to the suburb where Emory is located - its home to Agnes Scott College and very precious. In fact, I have been known to mutter about how Agnes Scott girls don't deserve Decatur - Emory really should be closer to it. Still, its the closest actually commercial downtown near Emory (Emory Village doesn't count) and I love it.


Having L in town provided the perfect opportunity for a picnic in Piedmont Park, which is the Golden Gate Park of Atlanta. Here we are, late in the evening:


Finally, below you can see Z, L and I united at last in a Waffle House. I don't have enough space to talk about Waffle House (it requires its own personal post), but just know that when you are driving around the Southeast, nothing is more comforting or welcome then that yellow and black sign rising from the wooded jungles or concrete wastelands that surround the interstates. They are truly magical places, were the waffles are huge and copious and the potatoes come smothered, covered, and choked, or some crap like that.


Every year we have Dooley's Week, a seven-day celebration of Emory's unofficial but very legitimate mascot. Once again, this needs a whole post to explain (one that, unlike the epic Waffle House entry, I actually plan on writing) but it culminates with a huge school-sponsored party called Dooley's Ball. Technically a masquerade, people wear all sorts of crap to it. Here are C and A. C isn't in costume, and A says she was dressed as a pirate. I said she was going as a Hot Tranny Mess. You decide.


And here are C and I, practicing our dance moves as we wait for the shuttle to arrive to take us to the party. It never came and so we had to get there under our own power. This mostly involved walking in bare feet while holding our heels and bitching until an Emory Escort pulled up. It was already pretty full of other drunk students but we begged the driver to let us pile in, which he did. This means that I rode to Dooley's Ball sitting on the floor of a minivan, between the knees of my three best friends and two wasted strangers. Good times. But anyway, before we gave up on the shuttle we were waiting at the stop. C and decided to practice some of the steps we had learned in Social Dance the semester before. This is the result:


That is basically it. A lot of stuff happened this semester that wasn't documented on camera, and this is just a sampling of what I do have photos of. Also, I'm not including what might be the biggest thing - graduation. Another post about that is on the way, I just have to get my life together first.

Oh, but one last picture: at some point during the semester A decided she would try to ride me like a horse. It didn't work.