Saturday, November 17, 2007

My Louis Vuitton Pumps

I've never been a shoe girl. In my closet on any given day you will probably find:
brown dress shoes
black dress shoes
brown boots
black boots
one pair of sneakers
comfortable dog-walking slip ons
various flip flops

However, things changed for me a few years back when I saw these gorgeous Louis Vuitton pumps:


Well, I won't say I became a shoe girl, but I became a Louis Vuitton Balmoral pump in red and black girl. Of course, there is no way I could afford these as they cost something around $650. But a girl can dream. At the time, the shoes were completely sold out, and even celebrities couldn't get them, but I found a few knock-offs on eBay that I bid on. I was willing to pay up to $70, but I kept getting outbid, and no one had the "Buy It Now" option back then. So, sadly, I let the dream die. It obviously wasn't meant to be.

Then, this week, planning my outfit for a formal Christmas party, I remembered my love for these shoes. They are a couple of seasons old now, but I figured somebody still had to be selling them. I found some knock-offs still available, but they really didn't look like the original:

Notice the red heel instead of a black one. And these cost $60! The rest of it looks good, but I felt like I could find a better copy of my beloved Balmorals. Then, I happened across across yet another
shoe:
These are nearly perfect! I don't think the velvet piping looks as good, but the black heel was key for me, and these are only $18! Seriously! So I totally bought them. I'm hoping the red will match the red in my dress, so I can wear them to the party, but even if it doesn't,
I LOVE THESE SHOES!

Friday, November 16, 2007

Thesis

I'm in the middle of writing my Master's thesis. I had a meeting with my thesis advisor this morning, and I was really dreading it because she hasn't been much help so far. In fact, I haven't gotten much feedback at all from her except one line e-mail responses saying, "You need to fix this" and a series of cancelled appointments. I had sent her a writing sample to read for the meeting, and I sent her my new outline, and I was honestly expecting her to 1) not have read it or 2) just hand it back to me and say, "This needs work" without giving me any constructive criticism at all. I couldn't have been more wrong.

She HAD read it, and she LIKED it. She said it was GOOD. She was really excited about it. And when I told her how overwhelmed I felt by the project, she CAME UP WITH A PLAN TO HELP ME. It was astonishing.

Plus, I have a meeting with her again tomorrow to start working on the journal at SMU. It doesn't pay anything, but it's great publishing experience, AND I get my name in the journal. Things are looking up!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Annoying Parents

My neighbors have this little girl. Well, I don't know if she's theirs, but I see her at their apartment 2 or 3 times a week. I think she's about 2 years old. She's very cute with blond little curls. The bad part is that she's kind of obsessed with my dog. And my dog is kind of obsessed with sitting at our front door which is about 95% glass, staring out and barking at anything that moves. So, the 2 or 3 times a week this little girl is over, she is constantly outside (at 11:30 pm, sometimes!), pointing at my dog, and carrying on somewhat. Which drives the Toad crazy. The thing is, half the time, her accompanying adults walk her over to my door and start pointing at the Toad as well, while all the time I'm yelling at him to "Be quiet!" and "Get your frog!" I pretty much have to go pick him up and physically remove him from the door to get him to calm down.

Now, I know what you're probably thinking - why don't you just get some blinds or something? Toad has destroyed every set of blinds in the apartment already. And, frankly, I like that the door is a window. I like the natural light. What would really solve the problem is if these people would refrain from baiting my dog. But, how exactly do I broach the subject? Like I said, I don't know if my neighbors are even the little girl's parents, so I don't know if saying something to them would help. And what do I say? I just don't think there's any way I can deal with this situation that doesn't make me come off looking like a bitch. This post probably makes me sound like a bitch. Whatever. It's an invasion of my privacy, and it BUGS me.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Golden Compass

I am very excited about seeing the movie "The Golden Compass" despite the fact that Nicole Kidman is in it. Hopefully Daniel Craig will make up for her. I have read the book series, and I thought they were passably good. The first one was definitely the best one.

One of the members of a Bible study group I attended in France actually lent me the books after I told her I really like the Harry Potter series. She was appalled at my enjoyment of Harry Potter, although she had never read any of them herself. She was convinced that J. K. Rowling had made a literal pact with the devil, and as a result the books are infused with demonic influence. Her mother (and she, too, I guess) had been heavily involved with the occult, and her Christian conversion experience was a dramatic one. She practiced a more mystical variety of Christianity than I have ever experienced before, and while I do believe that God communicates with her differently than he does with me, and I think she probably has some insight into the world of the occult based on her own experience, I kind of think she's wrong about Harry Potter. But, really, what do I know?

So, she lent me the Philip Pullman books as an alternative to Harry Potter. I really liked "The Golden Compass," nothing-ed "The Subtle Knife," and hated "The Amber Spyglass." What surprised me most is that, especially in "The Amber Spyglass," the author brings God into the story, not as a sort of philosophical concept, but as an impotent corporeal being who ultimately dissolves into nothingness. Um, that's pretty anti-Christian. At least Harry Potter just leaves God out of it. The reader is free to associate or omit God as he or she chooses. Philip Pullman doesn't really leave room for that.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Foam Dream

Jonathan and I were sitting in a restaurant looking at the dessert menu, and he was exclaiming over how good all the desserts looked. I remember there were 10 desserts on the menu, and 7 of them (yes, I counted them) were bowls of foam topped with foam. So, there was chocolate mousse topped with whipped cream, banana pudding with whipped cream, and some kind of Napoleon (or millefeuille, as the French would say) with - you guessed it - whipped cream. I was upset by that, so I wrote a little review of the restaurant. Then, I looked over at the board that listed the daily specials, and they had tacked up a copy of my restaurant review!

I think this dream stems from the trauma of ordering a Cosmopolitan the other night, and it turning out to be a "Foamapolitan." I seriously had to drink it through a straw. Gross.

Analysis:
Dessert:
1) Dessert in a dream can symbolize a treat or treating yourself, indulgence, self-reward, or self-soothing. The "dessert course" of a meal could symbolize the end part of an interaction or phase, since dessert is served at the end of a meal. Eating dessert can also mean that you are actually hungry or craving sweets.
2) To see a tasty dessert in your dream, represents indulgence, celebration, reward, or temptation. You are enjoying the good things in life.

Food:
1) A quality associated with the food's texture, such as a banana representing slippery or making a misstep. For more clues, consider the context of the food (whether it's being eaten, tastes good or bad, is being served to you, etc.) and what comes to mind when you think of the specific type of food.
2) Food is symbolic of a large variety of things. It could symbolize pleasure and indulgence. To the perpetual dieter, the dream could have a "compensatory" function where the food that is denied to the individual during the day shows up in the dream state. Dreams could additionally symbolize physical, mental, spiritual and emotional nourishment.
3) To see food in your dream, represents physical and emotional nourishment and energies. The different types of food can symbolize a wide range of things. Generally, fruit is symbolic of sensuality. Frozen foods may imply your cold emotions and frigid ways. Eating certain foods refers to qualities that you need to incorporate within your own self.

Foam:
1) To see foam in your dreams represents wishes or unrealistic expectations

Writing:
1) Writing is a means of communication. In dreams it may be a symbol of communicating with others, but it mostly represents communication with oneself. If you are writing in a dream or reading someone else's writing, it may be an unconscious effort to become aware of forces or issues in life. Writing is a secondary form of communication. Speaking is more direct and less cumbersome for most. Thus, the written message in your dream may be disguised or may be less genuine than other forms of receiving information from the unconscious. You may be trying to figure something out and this might be the first step in that process.
2) To dream of writing, or to see another person writing in a dream, signifies a need to listen to one's inner voice for advice on dealing with a real life situation.
3) To dream that you are writing, signifies some sort of communication with someone or with your conscious mind. It also denotes a mistake that you have made.

Early Onset Alzheimer's

What a cheery title. My sister-in-law works for the Alzheimer's association, so I realize it's not a joking matter, but weird things have been going on with my brain recently. Like, a few weeks ago, I was walking my dog, and when I got to the back gate of my apartment, I just stood there blankly trying to remember the door code. The one that I punch in two or three times a day. I just couldn't remember it. I mashed a few random buttons before I decided to walk around to the front of the building and see if someone had accidentally left it open. At that exact moment, a drunk guy practically ran across the street to talk to me, holding his plastic cup of whatever it was he had become intoxicated on and began hitting on me. Now, this happens with some regularity on my street, not because I'm all that hot or anything (well, maybe a little bit because I'm hot), but because there are a lot of drunk men hanging around. Beer goggles and all that. More like malt whisky goggles. Anyway, I fended him off by telling him my dog was mean (which is true) and mentioning my husband. It's amazing that even drunk, semi-homeless men respect the sanctity of marriage, but they really do.

So that event was weird with the forgetting of the door code, but weirder was that last night I was trying to use my microwave, and I was just standing in front of it, completely lost as to how it worked. I read once that the difference between normal "brainfarts" from something really serious like Alzheimer's is, for example, that everyone forgets their keys - that's completely normal and everyone does it, sometimes multiple times a day. You should get worried if you look down at your keys, and you don't know what they're used for. I don't feel a really need to worry about that because I know what microwaves are for: microwaves are for heating up Hot Pockets. But I honestly had no idea which buttons to push to make it work. I actually had to read the words written on the buttons to figure it out. Weird.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Gray Hair

So, I have like 8 gray hairs now. On my head. Right in front. To my head's credit, they are actually a kind of pretty silver color. Thank you, follicles, for not just growing nasty Oliver Twist's gruel-colored gray hairs for me. Jonathan found a white hair on his chest this week. We are getting old. And the thing is, if nature just takes its course, and nothing tragic happens, we've still got like 60 years left. We're only 1/3 of the way through. And I ALREADY have gray hair??? Hmph. At least I'm not balding.