august: cleveland county

Y'all, this Thanksgiving break was one for the fiction section. I think I could write a very successful novel about this break in the tradition of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever or A Christmas Story. To start off the extravaganza, Mom & I met Cassandra and Patsy (our cousins) in Shawnee for lunch on Tuesday. We had a great time, and then went shopping at the Shawnee Mall, which has come back from being quite dead. I picked out a few things for Christmas, bought myself a pair of boots that look almost exactly like my beloved brown lace-up boots that didn't make it back from Germany, and got some fabric. That's right...I'm going to make curtains for the living room over Christmas break!

Wednesday was similarly eventful.

Emily went to the phone store to get them to switch her back to her old phone cause the new one was awful. Instead, she ended up with an iphone. Behold world: the Burrises have entered the 21st century!

That evening we went to the movies and saw Mockingjay. The best part of the movie is definitely in the middle where they just show the trailer for the movie to District 13 and then they all cheer. I liked that they cheered because it covered up Em's & my laughter.

After that we went by Lowe's because Mom & Dad needed something. (I have no idea what. We bought a poinsettia.) We found some Chelsea barstools, and then Emily and I skipped around serenading the store with lovely song. (Mom & Dad mysteriously disappeared...we couldn't find them. We ended up waiting out in the car.)

(We sang this song.)

Here we are at the movies. We're excited because we can take selfies with Em's new phone.

That evening we went to see Grandma & Granddad because Granddad had surgery - he looks like he got hit in the face quite a lot, but he seemed fine besides that. He was in good enough spirits to join Mom in mildly heckling Grandma while she was on the phone.

It's not Thanksgiving without a gun! (Jk. This was my first Thanksgiving gun.)

On Thanksgiving we went to my other grandparents' house. It was quite a fun time - Grandma made ham, which made me super happy because I really find turkey totally pointless. (Unless it's ground turkey for tacos. Ground beef is so expensive!) One of my uncles was there, but most of my cousins had come the day before - I'm sorry to have missed them because I'm pretty sure I still haven't met some of them!!

We got to see the famed hogs that Grandpa keeps on having to shoot at because his neighbor won't keep them in a pen. Additionally, there was an armadillo in the yard, so Dad tried to shoot it. (Hence the gun.) Overall, it was a rather wonderful Thanksgiving! I ate most of a batch of chocolate chip cookies by myself, which is always a good day.

The Sisters Burris with a Thanksgiving goose.

Gameday! We watched Arkansas vs. Missouri on tv on Friday. It was a shame that they lost...but there's always next year!

I also read quite a lot during this break. Here are my quick review of these books:

Pulse by Patrick Carmen: Soooo good! I was excited because the library had the sequel when I went this afternoon. It's another dystopian book, but the twist is that the main characters are (so far) working to preserve the new government system.

Salvage by Alexandra Duncan: This book is science fiction feminism. It's fantastic if you can get over the fact that the girl talks kinda weird...she says "so" all the time and it took me most of the book to learn to ignore that.

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves: Totally okay. I got the sequel today as well. Sometimes I love Neil Gaiman, and sometimes his characters are in such frustrating situations that I don't like it. Whatever, I still loved Neverwhere.

The Diviners by Libba Bray: I'd heard of Libba Bray a lot before I read any of her books. I was surprised by how much I liked this book - it's pretty creepy, and it definitely gave me a nightmare. It's also really long, so I was surprised when the ending was a bit of a cliffhanger. Even worse, the library didn't have the sequel checked in, so I'll have to wait for it!

I also reread one of the Fudge books by Judy Blume and was dismayed to discover that I'm closer in age to the parents than to Peter.

On Saturday we went to Tulsa to visit Target, which was quite fun! After that we stopped at the Muskogee mall to see a movie - Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, which was super cute.

Today I agreed to be the liturgist at church for December. I'm not quite sure how that happened...

I also got a fruit tea sampler pack, and the first cup I made diffused weirdly, and I thought it was pretty, so here's a picture!

Happy Advent, everyone!!

Here's a pile of books I'm currently reading or have recently read!!

From back to front: Rambunctious Garden by Emma Marris

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling

The Evolution of Faith by Philip Gulley

Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Atlantia by Ally Condie

I'm reading Rambunctious Garden for a class. It's okay so far - not really something I'd read if I were picking out a book, but it's interesting and I can already tell that the discussion about it in class next week will be good. Also....this is my last assigned book of the semester!!! Huzzah!

I'm rereading Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me for the tenth time. It's still so funny! I think I read it at the beginning of the semester as well.

I'm not liking The Evolution of Faith as much as I thought I would. I'm not much for theology, but I'm giving it a whirl. I'm only halfway through, though, so it could become more interesting.

Inside the Kingdom is a fascinating book about Saudi Arabia. I'm about 3/4 done with it, and I liked it a lot better than the book I was assigned to read for class about SA. It's such a different culture - I'm still going to finish the book even though the class discussion about Saudi Arabia is over.

Finally, we get to the books I've finished!

City of Bones was not as good as I was expecting it to be. I feel like it was really hyped up on the internet, but it wasn't that different from other YA books I've read. I liked it, but I'm not sure if I'll read the others. (Jk. I'll read them. I'm also taking recommendations for winter break reading.) I feel like this book is getting a raw deal from me because I'm 23 and I've read so many other YA books. If I were 10 years younger, I might have absolutely loved these. (And this, my dears, marks the first time I've ever said "if I were 10 years younger.")

Last but not least, Atlantia. AHHHH. So good! I really like this even though I'm not the biggest fan of Ally Condie's voice. (Does this make sense? Some of her phrasings get on my nerves.) It's about a futuristic world where the environment got so bad that some people were sent to live in an underwater city (in a bubble) called Atlantia. It's dystopian with a twist because there's an element of a local religion and the supernatural, which makes it different from every single other dystopian novel out there. Also, Ally is from Utah so everyone in this book (and in her Matched series as well) has a really weird name. (Main character: Rio. Supporting: Bay (who I referred to as Bae), Maire, True). Overall, I liked this more than the Matched trilogy, but not as much as I liked The Selection,which I read last month and loved. It was cool that I put this book on hold right when it came out, so I was the first one to read it and there were no fingerprints on the cover when I got it. It's the little things in life!!

Somehow it's almost 10:30, so I'm going to head to bed. Cheers!

Hello all!

Today was a snow day here at the University of Oklahoma. I was surprised to find out that President Boren records the message that goes out to students when the university closes; at Arkansas they always had a robot do it and it was very creepy. Since I have 2 of my 3 classes on Monday, it was like I missed a full week of 2 of my classes! One of my classes is coping by using the online discussion forum instead of class; the other class is just letting this week's material go. This means that I am done learning statistics - all I have left to do is my presentation!!

I've been making homemade lemon-limeade. It's tart, but so good! (Limes were 5 for $1 last week.)

I also made my Advent calendar last week. I cleaned out an old candle jar and attached some sequins before writing on the glass in Sharpie. I'm going to fill it with 25 thoughts of the day I wrote during Advent last year & read one a day! I'm also going to write new slips this Advent and make it a tradition!

I didn't get all the wax out. Oh well.

Related: We sang "Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates," my favorite Advent song, at church last Sunday. I thought that was strange since it's so close to Advent...

This past weekend I went home because Arkansas/LSU was on ESPN2 and I don't get that channel on the weird cable package at my apartment. It was definitely worth it to watch that game on tv. WOOOOOOOOOOOOO PIG!!!!

On Sunday morning, however, the weather forecast changed so that snow was predicted all day for Norman. I skipped church to drive home so I wouldn't get caught in bad weather, which turned out to be a good decision!

I made pizza for dinner with homemade crust & sauce.

The crust didn't rise this time? The last time I made pizza I used the same recipe and the crust rose. Bread is weird.

The last picture I took of the snowfall before it got too dark outside. They cancelled school around 9 pm....but by 10:30 this morning, most of it had melted! I definitely would've been safe going to my 3:30 class, but the roads would've frozen by the time I got finished with class at 9 this evening, so I'm glad I didn't have to go.

One last observation on this snow day: How many people do you know that got a day off of school for heat when it wasn't hot outside and a day off for snow when there wasn't snow outside within six months? I am crazy good at getting out of school. :P

Ahhh....November! The weather has finally remembered what autumn is, which is nice because I was sick of wearing skirts to work every day. (I hate wearing pants when it's hot out and shorts are a tiny bit inappropriate since I work in the building where I have my classes.)

This week seemed to fly by! I went to a few of the events the German department sponsored in honor of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. My favorite was watching the movie Und deine Liebe auch... (And your love too...), which was an old East German film about step-brothers and the Berlin Wall. (Spoiler: the good East German brother gets the girl.) This led to me watching videos from my favorite East German film, Nicht schummeln, Liebling (Don't cheat, darling), which I saw on tv last fall. It's much cheerier than Und deine Liebe auch... since it's about soccer teams.

The weirdest thing about grad school is that because I work at school and not at a regular job, I end up having tons of time for schoolwork. Some of my colleagues seem to be in a bit of a time crunch, but I'm doing fine. I blame this on my ridiculous organizational skills and the fact that I'm not a BA/MA student. (They're all doing 9 hours undergraduate and 9 hours graduate. This sounds crazy.) Additionally, since I was in band for almost all of my undergrad, I'm not used to having this much free time. If you do the math, band and related things would take up something like 24 hours out of my week if it was football season and we had a home football game. It was much more if I went to an away game or if we went to Little Rock!

I found this book in the university library! It's about the University of Erfurt, but unfortunately only the title page is in German. The rest is in Latin, so I couldn't read it.

I voted on Tuesday!!! It was really quite fun to vote, although my votes didn't seem to make much of a difference.