The Good, The Bad and the Exhausting

Good: slept in; got both my Chem assignments done; made up my Chem exam 2; made a deal to purchase a painting of myself from one of the students in the class I was modeling for; it was absolutely gorgeous spring weather today in the mid sixties and I wanted desperately to just lie in the grass and soak up sunshine; wandered into Dave & Cranky Chuckie's American Bistro in Provo and made friends with the owners and chefs after being served a pizzookie on the house; Kent came back from the temple where his brother Daniel just got endowed; was reminded of just how strongly I love his face; bought him a nice suit jacket that was basically 85% off

Portrait of Marina Ramsay by Sheriden Bronson

Chocolate Chip Pizookie from Dave & Cranky Chuckie's

Bad: felt so disorganized during that Chem exam, probably partially to do with the fact that I just found out Tuesday that I could make it up, and the only time I could study for it was last night so I was up until 5 AM studying and finishing assignments; missed Physics because I slept in

Exhausting: only getting 5 hours of sleep; forgetting to eat because I'm so busy all day; sitting for three hours in the same pose; trying not to get overwhelmed with the To Do list containing family, financial, wedding and school things; having to stay up late again to complete other assignments

Squaw, Cougars, and Settlers

This morning I hiked Squaw with my friends Jace, Rudy and Alex. I knew them all from my Freshman Academy, and they got home a few weeks ago from their missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The last time I hiked Squaw was spring of '09, when there was still 3 feet of snow. I wore my boots, but we had to head back about 5/7ths of the way up to the top, because the boys (in their sneakers) were afraid they were going to get frostbite. So, it was my first time getting to the peak, and what a view! Unfortunately, my camera's display is broken and couldn't tell me that there was no memory card inside. *cries a little* I "took" some pretty sweet shots too...

After a shower and a nice nap, I caught the last 15 mins of the BYU-Ole Miss game. Super intense. 14-13 win against Ole Miss, which means it's our first win on the road as an independent team. Go Cougs!

Then I was invited to a barbecue (chicken cooked by the grille of death and delicious wild rice with butter, chives and golden raisins). We played Settlers of Cataan as teams, and got our butts whooped by the newbies. And the only thing better than fresh squeezed, chilled watermelon juice is sparkling lemonade with watermelon ice cubes. *happy place* 

Watermelon Juice

My goodness I love microbiology. We prepared agar plates today - it's like nerdy cooking class, except it's food for bacteria. And I learned that my professor used to live in Zimbabwe. He's white, older, and has that awesome South African accent. He asked me where in Scotland my family is from and I was blown away! No one I've met knows that the spelling of my last name is Scottish. Apparently he had some friends in Zimbabwe that moved there from Scotland who had my same last name. Genealogy time!

Among other awesome things we discussed, he brought up Schrodiger's Riddle: What is Life? and the interesting fact that just as Adam was commanded to name all the creatures he could find, we are still naming living organisms today (just in a highly organized, latin-based way).

Tonight were the ballroom auditions for the BYU Ballroom Dance Company. I went to help out and dance with the guys auditioning. Thankfully, both the guys I danced with got called back, so at least my shaky memory of social dance steps didn't hurt their chances! I'm really excited to see who got put on our team tomorrow :) Several of my friends from Summer Team got on. I think this will be a fantastic year.

I should mention that fresh-squeezed, chilled watermelon juice is an excellent beverage.

College is Hard

Another busy "first day" of school. I had another MMBio class this morning. It's an intro to Mircobiology class, but there are mostly seniors in it. I love the teacher so far - he says he's a big softie when it comes to grading, but his main objective is to get us to think and discuss things. I love that. It excites me when teachers want students to really stretch their necks out and go deeper.
But my Chem 107 class, a lab, is terribly disorganized. Two of the TA's don't speak very good English and for the first fifteen minutes, my labmates and I just stared at each other and our tables like "what do we do now?" So frustrating, but I'll do what I can to make it less complicated for myself.

I got into Gold I Standard Ballroom! I'm so excited, I haven't been in a standard class for two years. Since my latin partner has a particular love of standard and smooth, and my team coach does as well, I figured I would return to standard and brush up on the technique. I do love quickstep and tango :D

I also had my first meeting with my new bishop. I'm gonna love this ward! More details next week.

Aaaaand I decided to join a fresh produce food co-op with some people from Blues. I am SO excited, you have no idea. You only have to pay once, and the cost is split between us. Basically, tons of fresh, delicious fruits and veggies and meat every other week for the rest of the season. My mind is swirling with tasty dinner ideas. [nomnom]

Better-Than-Sex Cupcakes

So my very good friend Mike Dymond who I've known since I started dancing blues gave me a link to the Best Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting Ever. The blog it's from is called Cupcake Project. On perusing the blog, I found this epic recipe for BTS cupcakes. They're very similar to the raspberry chocolate ones I like to make, so I decided to try it.

I adapted the recipe to my own taste and available ingredients. The batter was deadly rich - chocolatey batter with mini semi-sweet chips. I didn't like the recipe provided, so I improvised my own - heavy whipping cream infused with some nutella and cocoa powder, squirted into the center of the cupcake. Then normal dark chocolate ganache and some white chocolate drizzles. They are so adorable, and all three dozen were eaten by the end of the night.

Critique: I don't know how to compensate for the dryness of Utah, so they came out a little dry and crunchy. Best eaten with a sip of milk. But Mike said that it was a nice texture contrast; the inside was moist and fluffy but the outside had a nice crunch. It also probably had to do with the fact that I made mini ones instead of full size ones.

A Day of More Cooking!

When will the foodings stop??

I swear I talk about and do other things than cook and bake. But I have more to share.

So, another thing on the Frister List was a summer meal I like to make called the Tomato Steak and Baked Goat Cheese Salad. I was finally able to make it today since everyone was home for once.

The delectable salad. Everyone saves the cheese for last.

Then I did another baking experiment. We already know I love red velvet cupcakes. But we found that Bread and Chocolate had another cupcake recipe video. Theirs had a bit more cocoa, and added cinnamon and balsamic vinegar. It was simply delightful.

I made a dozen of these enormous delights and gave them to friends

Celtics Cupcakes

I think I'm addicted to making cupcakes. It's so terribly fun! And it's delightful to watch as you make everyone around you happy and fat ^_^

I made these at my friend Zach's house. We knew we wanted to make cupcakes, so we walked into the house and his parents were watching the Celtics game. Then Zach made a suggestion: instead of red velvet cupcakes, how about GREEN velvet cupcakes? And then, in the middle of making them, when the scores were really close, he announced that if they lost, we could not eat the cupcakes and would have to simply stare at them in shame and sorrow. So, we were a little more fervent in our support for the team. Good thing they won, or we wouldn't have been witness to the deliciousness of green velvet.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

So my sisters had their end-of-year bake sale for Boston Ballet this weekend. I made a few dozen red velvet cupcakes for them to sell, and to give to teachers. They are soooo delicious. I used a recipe courtesy of the blog haute from the oven. They're sweet and moist and bright red. It's my favorite cupcake, I think.

AAAH so much sushi.

Okay okay. I kinda went crazy.

Here we have four different types of yumminess. The nigiri around the plate are prosciutto, tofu, and sweet potato. In the middle there are sweet potato and tuna sushi. I shared with the family. The tuna was everyone's favorite.

Dad came home last night! It's so nice to have him back ^_^ He's always going to Saudi every few weeks for work. Here's the blog he sometimes updates about his adventures.

Tonight was a standard ballroom group lesson for waltz. It was great! I haven't done any standard ballroom in like, two months. And I got to wear my new fancy standard shoes. Hee.

All considered though, I'm kinda bummed. It's pretty lonely out here. There aren't many people who are interested in dating socially, and most of my friends from high school are still in school, so they can't play. I've been keeping myself busy, of course; ballroom three hours a night, blues on Thursdays, driving my sisters around to ballet, and making sushi. I still haven't found a job, so I feel a little useless. But soon, friends will be done with finals and come back to Suds, and I will find a way to make some money! And being home is pretty wonderful. I missed the trees and greenery, hanging out and rockin to rad car jamz with my sisters, talking to my dad, and having breakfast every morning with my mom.

Determination!

As one of my friends told me, "If you give up, I'll never dance with you again."

Dance-related threats work on me, I guess.

PS. I really want a Toothless figurine. Maybe I'll make one...

More sushiiiii.

We did another mad-dash sushi dinner today.

tofu nigiri, prosciutto nigiri, sweet potato sticks

I think my favorite was the tofu. But the prosciutto was pretty good too, it didn't need soy sauce at all.

Day Before Mother's Day

One of my best friends at home is my friend Jeremy. Today we finally got together (family and New York adventures prevented me from seeing him in any of his end-of-semester concerts) and caught up on life stories. We went to Big Fresh (an amazing stir-fry, organic, hippy food kinda place) like we usually do when I'm home. Then we went on an adventure to find the perfect mother's day gifts. I already had mine planned, so I was along for the ride. We forgot that the mall was swarmed, so we got out of there speedy fast. That's one weird thing about me. I really don't like shopping. The shopping part of shopping that is. I love being with people and talking and running around together, but I hate spending money and trying to figure out what fits/what matches/what "just works". Happy ending: we found the perfect gift. Then we went back to my house and made cards out of construction paper, markers, and stickers. It was so fun!

My mom has given me the task of backing up and ultimately clearing the home computer. It might be slow because it's just dang old, but it doesn't hurt to virtually tidy things up. I'll be happily occupied for some time with this. :)

~Me

You Keep Staring Like You've Never Seen the Stars...

If you need me to remind you who you are...

Yeah, I'm on a little bit of an Elbow kick right now. They've got such chill, lovely music.

[Station Approach, The Stops, The Bones of You, Mirrorball, Grounds for Divorce, Weather to Fly]

Basically the biggest thing I did all day was eat a slice of pizza at Sweet Tomatoes. I talked to a mom there who has a job in nutrition, so it was a huge treat for her kids to have pizza. :P They were super cute and were telling me all sorts of crazy stories. I also planned my trip to Bard to visit Sarah. Hopefully that will happen Thursday. I need to get cracking on studying calculus, I'm going stir crazy without a job! And I really want to paint something. Inspiration just seems to elude me. Maybe if I find the right song... "The Stops" is really stuck in my head.

...and I'll miss you the way you miss the sea.

~Marina

Summer 2010: Week 1

Tuesday, April 27th:

Mokay. So this morning, I awoke to my phone buzzing from several txts from my sisters telling me to wake up and get my butt over to the high school, so I went and gave them their presents (Lise got a BYU sweatshirt like mine, Sasha got the first book in the Wheel of Time series called The Eye of the World), talked to my old science and calc teachers (below are the doodles I drew on Dr. Pegram's board), and then drove my sisters home (with much car jamz). Then I took them to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes (DELICIOUS italian thin crust pizza with crazy awesome tomato sauce), then to ballet. While they were at ballet, I went and hung out with my ballroom teachers. Everyone was super excited to see me, and I talked to Ray for a while. He knows some awesome lindy and blues places, so I'll be going this week. ^_^Then drove my sisters home, screaming lyrics all the way, making people look at us weird. Came home. Kinda worried about finding a job. The end of day 1 home.

Wednesday, April 28th:
Today I was going to do a lot of stuff (like laundry, visit more teachers, talk to students about college, etc) but no. I was lazy. SO I ended up visiting my awesome friend Steph after I dropped my dad off at the bus station on his way to Saudi :'( . We made tortilla soup. It turned out SO GOOD. I don't even know how, we didn't follow the recipe. We just threw stuff in we thought would taste good, like black beans and corn and peppers and chicken. It was so so fun. After that, I drove over to my sisters' ballet studio in Newton. My old ballet teacher was there and she was so excited to see me! Ms. Busch was so nice, and she let me come in and watch the class. My sisters have gotten so incredibly good. I'm really amazed. I do miss ballet a lot, but not quite enough to go through the pain again ;) Turf Toe once is good enough for me. So then I went to dinner at Lam's with my mom (really good Vietnamese food). I got tofu vegetable red curry with summer rolls and coconut juice. It was so amazing. The guy next to us had a ridiculous accent and was really loud about how awesome he was. He and his date(?) even started singing some hokey song at one point. It was all we could do not to laugh out loud. I could barely contain myself. After our lovely dinner (and me being interrogated on various points of my life), I drove off to ballroom for the group lessons. Everyone was so happy to see me, but I can't believe how out of shape I've gotten after only a few weeks! I'm going to be there so much this summer. It's gonna rock. BYU ballroom team, here I come.

Thursday, April 29th
Today was pretty dang sweet. I took apart my mom's MacBook (because the hard drive died) and went Blues dancing. It was pretty cool because there's basically a clone of every blues dancer I know in Provo. But now my toe is acting up again. Joy.

Friday April 30th:
Ordered the harddrive for the Macbook. I plan on taking apart our other two MUCH older computers for kicks. I went to ballet (took the Tahoe, man that thing is a monster) with my mom and sisters. I helped weed and water the ballet garden, which was quite nice given the uncharacteristic warm sunny weather. Then when my sisters got out of ballet, we went to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant called Karoun with my relatives from Alaska. I also discovered, while I was chatting with some of the ballet people, that Mr. Anderson has a huge thing for ravens! I think I might make something raveny for him, like a tribal raven painting or something.

Saturday, May 1:
LOBSTER DINNERRRR that I have been dying to have for YEARS. We had lobster and mussels and clams and oysters on the half shell. I've never had them on the half shell, so it was a pretty fun experience. And I've heard that they are an aphrodisiac? I'll have to test that out one day in the distant future :P Must be the zinc.

Lobsterrrrr. He's looking at you.

Lise...you're doing it wrong.

Sunday, May 2nd:
Drove my sisters to Snow White rehearsal. Then Mom, Lise, Sasha, and the Alaskans went to theCoach Grill for dinner. Whoa-expensive, but really tasty.

Left to right: Granny, Grumps, Lise, Me, Sasha, Mom, Roz

in front of the picture we were talking about all night

Monday, May 3rd:

Basically lazed around the house all day. Cleaned up a bit, did laundry. Alaska people left on a plane today.

The hdd I ordered Friday for my mom's broken MacBook came around 4 pm. I didn't have the proper screwdriver for extracting the old hard drive from its protective little metal home. So my friend David ran over with a Torx driver. Installed it beautifully. Then we went on a Best Buy adventure to find the Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The hunt for the snow leopard was a success. After a bit of confusion formatting the new hdd, it's now installing smoothly and happily. I'm actually really glad about this because now I can just put all my music on the mac for my sisters to use! The hdd I bought off NewEgg is 320 Gb, so it has more than enough room for what my mom/sisters need it for. Happiness!!

Until next week ~ Me.

Eheh...er, hi there.

Heh, um hey guys. It's uh, been a long time, yeah? Well, I won't even try to catch up now... I'll just do it in small increments. But not right now.

I've been slightly to really obsessed with bento and onigiri and sushi lately. It's so delicious and healthy and cute and artistic, I can't help myself! So here I give you my favorite Bento sites. Plus some. Will post pictures of my own little things later.

AnnaTheRed’s Bento Factory is the blog of a Japanese-American woman who loves to make bento, plushies, and go to random anime conventions. She makes bento for herself and her boyfriend, and they are incredibly detailed and colorful. Lots of well-known Japanese characters from anime and movies, like Spirited Away, Totoro, and Pokemon. Some of the instructions are very detailed, sometimes bogglingly so. Her index contains all the bentos and the how-tos. Go to her flickr account for a complete gallery.

Cooking Cute is another bento site by a Vietnamese woman who makes bento for herself, her husband and new son. Being a mom, she knows all the easier tricks to making bento. Her recipes and instructions are very easy to understand. Her bento is mostly normal, colorful, tasty creations, but she does have quite a few remarkable character bentos in her gallery. The recipes section is very detailed, and even has sections for vegetarian, gluten-free, etc.

Just Bento is an online Bento community. They share pictures of their creations, stories, recipes, cultural knowledge, and dietary specifics. The section entitled “Bentos” Has pictures and detailed descriptions of each, including time needed, calories, culture, and diet type.

Just Hungry is Just Bento’s sister site. A blog created by a Japanese woman in 2003, her site focuses on Japanese cuisine and home cooking. She also comments on food wherever she travels, and discusses “healthy and casually ethical eating and cooking.” It looks nummy :3

Lunch In A Box is a blog by a mom in San Fran who started making bento because they found out her husband had celiac disease. She is fluent in Japanese, and loves making bento for her family. She makes bento from all sorts of cuisines.

I used the search engine on Lunch In A Box to find a bento store closeby to Boston, and the nearest is in Quincy, called Kam Man Market. I’d like to go there sometime, because commenters have said it has a dollar store for bento boxes, accessories, and tools for bento, as well as a big asian grocery and POCKY.

I’m really excited about this new edible hobby. It will be a great skill for me in college and in the future when I’m a mom, because it’s perfectly portioned, very healthy food, and cute to boot!

*noms leftover onigiri* Buh-bye!