compliment from a stranger

I was at the mall back in March buying myself a pair of sunglasses at fossil, and the worker asked where I was from.  He said I didn't look like I was from Louisville....more like Chicago, New York,...or Bardstown Rd.

I've been putting off this entry because I wanted to model that outfit... still working on that.

I've been thoroughly embracing dresses, sandals, leggings, necklaces, sunglasses, and well-groomed hair.

It's just too bad I still need to do shopping for rotation clothes, because I am just so into the casual stuff right now.

Warm weather is better than ever.

And its nice having an excuse to dress decently while I'm studying since I'm in a coffee shop every day.

My Concert History

I saw Talib Kweli a month ago, a few days before my last block exam; it was awesomeeeee.

I was thinking I'd make a blog just to talk about it like I did with Gaga, and it occurred to me that really, I'd like to compile a list of every show I've been to, just because sometimes I feel like I've been to a ton of them.  I've actually been putting off this post for a while just because I knew it would take a minute to think of everything.  I am sure I will have to update it at least a few times after I post it the first time.  One thing for sure is I can't let myself reflect on every one of the concerts or its going to be entirely too drawn out.

Trying to make this chronological:

MSI guy

2001 Krazy Fest - Alkaline Trio, Elliott, Saves the Day, Hot Water Music, Boy Sets Fire? @ the Water Tower
2002? - The Used, Coheed and Cambria @ Expo 5
2002-2004...so many random indie bands that I just don't have time to remember
2003 Krazy Fest - Hatebreed, Andrew WK, Atreyu @ Waterfront park
2004 - MSI @ Jillians
2004 - Chevelle @ waterfront?
2005 - MSI @ Jillians

Deftones - bleh show

2005 - Modest Mouse @ the old Male High School
2006 - Slipknot (HAha....) @ Indianapolis
2006 - Mars Volta, System of a Down @ Columbus, OH
2006 - Deftones @ Dayton, OH
2007? - Queens of the Stone Age @ the place on Liberty
2007- Modest Mouse @ the place on Liberty
2008 - Common @ Butler University

Kanye's random monster/dinosaur

2008 - Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, N.E.R.D., (was supposed to see Rihanna too, but she bailed) @ Cincinnati
2008 - the Smashing Pumpkins @ the Palace
2009 - The Decemberists @ Indianapolis
2010 - My Morning Jacket @ the Yum Center
2011 - Lady Gaga  @ the Yum Center
2011 - Talib Kweli @ Headliners

Gaga's monster

2011 - The Decemberists @ Iroquois park

Mama's day

Two years ago was my first mother's day, and it didn't occur to Jeff that it meant he was supposed to do something special.  I've made a point to remind him this and last year.  That's just the first thing that has came to my mind as I begin this post.

Note the shoes...they really cool

So I ask him today what he's got for me, and he says, "I meant to get something yesterday...," and then a little while later while he was working in the yard he picked a nice pink rose for me out of our garden.  At first I had thought he had stole it from the neighbors- but nope, it was just a nice, pink, sweet smelling rose that belonged to us already.  I decided that the fossil purse I got for myself a couple of nights ago would be good enough :).

BEAUTIFUL

I spent the day on the porch. Working, studying, entertaining Saia, and mostly just enjoying the day.  In the afternoon my mom and grandma stopped by to see a few plants Jeff and I bought yesterday.

Schlafly Raspberry - Try it

Yesterday, we were at an ACE hardware getting things for projects around the house and we decided to splurge a bit.  We got a push broom (!), a pair of loppers (omg wonderful!), a bulb for the aquarium, a giant piece of glass for a frame I've been putting together slowly over the past year, a piece of plexiglass to fix our garage door, and a bunch of dirt and plants.  Everything has made it in the house except for the aquarium bulb and the giant piece of glass, which were unsuccessful endeavors...stupid excessively-breakable things.

I knew I could get away with splurging ($34, lol) on plants and gardening stuff if I made one special purchase: I picked out a nice big tomato plant for Jeff.  He complains how the tomatoes he buys always go bad before he gets to use them (as does most of our produce, unfortunately).

what's it called?  Couldn't tell you.  Ask me later.

 I always want to buy plants when I see them, but I think I've largely convinced myself that gardening is too hard.  I tend to always over or underwater my plants.  I have no concept of plant food.  And I've never successfully transitioned my plants from one season into the other.  I tried to grow some food seasoning plants last year- but that was a complete failure and if you ask me growing things from seeds is impossible.  But, its a hobby that I know I'd love if I could just teach myself enough about it to keep up with it.  All of the flowers I picked out yesterday were to go in pots outside, but I need more plants for my indoors.  Indoor plants are the ones I have a really hard time with though.

Lucky for us, we didn't have to become gardeners to have our own- the garden at our house was one of the most beautiful things about it when we bought it.  The stonework and organization most definitely add value to the property.  Crazy enough, whoever planted our garden put in the most work-free plants anyone could ask for.  Everything we have blooms at some point in the spring or summer, and there is always something in bloom it seems.  Our work has mostly just been cleaning up the leaves and the ungodly amount of helicopters from the oak tree above our yard every spring.  And that is plenty of work if you ask me.

look what my camera can do!!! amazing! see tomato

After we bought the plants and things yesterday, we had somewhere to be, but before we went we both wanted to do all of our projects.  Jeff fixed the garage door, did an unnecessary amount of tree trimming, planted the tomato plant, and swept up my aquarium bulb.  I arranged and planted all of my flowers in pots.  We made a special barrier for the tomato plant to protect it from animals and Saia out of crap from around the house: an old door screen, some random piece of metal, a couple hangers, and a broom pole.

Kasha: officially our outdoor cat as far as we are concerned

Finally, I had to go ahead and make a post about today because I managed to take a nice series of pictures.  I ignorantly discovered a number of options my camera has that I'm going to be taking advantage of all the time.

Counting the hobbies now...blogging, photography, trainspotting, homemaking... gardening?

Osama.......

I just got on facebook for the first time today and was overwhelmed by the news feed of comments about today's big news...  Most of them were by one person, and there comments as well as the replies to them just frustrated me a bit, so here I am.

I spent half an hour getting ready today, 45 minutes on a bike in the rain (bad day to start riding again), 9:30-4:30 in Quill's coffee shop, and then finally I arrived at a nail place to get my first manicure thing.  I'm actually going to post a brief blog about that later too.

I looked up at the bright flashing TV above me for the beginning 5 o clock news and held my mouth agape for about 5 minutes while the breaking news headline bore half the screen. I wondered how late I was to find out- nobody around me looked surprised.  All of a sudden it made sense to me why that random chick at Quills went outside in the rain just to take a picture of the newspaper stand.  And here I thought she just had some random thing for that, or was into photography......

Oh the life of social and cultural ignorance led by a med student. I didn't know about Libya until 3 days into it or something when Chris posted some article on how the Libyan government turned off their internet (and that's all it specified).  I responded to his post- "....and why would a government feel the need to do this?" lol.

I think I was surprised because I had believed all the assumptions and jokes out there that Osama was going to die in a cave.  In fact, I figured there was a chance he was dead already.  So much for that.  It is pretty nasty he has been catered to and playing golf this whole time...  This is a nice Louis C.K. clip that I recently saw and I thought of during the broadcast:

http://tv.gawker.com/#!5621218   I can't embed it, but this guy is hilarious people. Please do yourself a favor and watch him sometime.

The news likes to post blog quotes and facebook comments these days, and they showed a few that were worth mentioning but one in particular I remember and appreciate: "The Bible says not to boast the death of our enemies."

I don't feel boastful.  I feel surprised, proud for the outcomes this may mean for Obama's presidency, all of a sudden more understanding of why the Afghanistan efforts were continued after all...  but mostly, I feel solemn about the circumstances of what brought us to this point, and about the widespread ignorance the entire 9/11 fiasco brought us, which will be further perpetuated in this breaking news.

The news went on with some surprisingly intelligent comments on the matter, the context of which I am unsure: "70% of Americans do not know a Muslim."  "80% of Americans have not learned about the religion of Islam."  Those numbers shock me...Sometimes I feel ignorant to just how ignorant the populations around me are.  I want to believe that everyone can be and is internally virtuous, but a lack of understanding and exposure is so detrimental to the necessities of acquiring virtue... especially when it comes to culture and religion.  Am I just a hippie with unrealistic ideals?  Hmm, maybe according to just 80% of the country.

Why are people boasting on their facebook walls, making t shirts, videos, having patriot parties?  Because we beat the "bad guy."  The world of black and white, good and evil: of course that is the American view of the world.  Just what we all learned as kids when we developed our concrete thought processes.  Osama was wrong.  But he beleived in this black and white philosophy too- hence he was an "extremist."

And of course now everyone is worried about a backlash from the extremists.  What else can we expect but what happened with Tupac and Biggie?  How many Muslims do people think the US has pissed off with this action?  Muslims did not like Osama, and I am sure that there are just as many, if not many more, Muslims that are satisfied with this event than there are Christians (after all, they outnumber us by plenty).  There will always be extremists, but they will not be any better at making offensive advances now then they were after 9/11.