: Occupied

Sorry to all my loyal blogger fans, life's been busy, and not incredibly news worthy.  School is getting going in full force, but so far I'm keeping my head above water.  Actually it hasn't been bad at all, I like all my classes a lot (except occasionally chem 107, which frustrates me).  I'm doing science!  Dissecting stuff, doing chemistry experiences, learning all about all sorts of things, and doing a little calculus and religion on the side, to keep things interesting.  

Other than that, sunday meals continue to get more and more ambitious.  We're now doing brunch and dinner.  This week we made really good buttermilk pancakes, and then one of the girls who comes made chicken pasta stuff, that was delicious.  Not having to make dinner this week, I took another stab at cinnamon rolls.  Previous stabs went poorly, but in my defense both were made on my mission, in portugal, which never was very conducive to good baking.  Anyway, these ones turned out really well.  Possibly the most delicious, and least nutritious, things i've ever made.  I got the recipe from Alton Brown, and considering my conspicuous lack of a kitchen aid (or a real whisk, or a sifter, or a rolling pin, or plastic wrap) I think I did pretty well for myself.  It also made me want to go DI and buy some cooking stuff, so that I don't have to improvise so much (like using jam jars for rolling pins, and cheese graters for sifters).  Cooking is way fun, by the way, it's one of the three things I always enjoy spending my money on, the other two being bikes and t-shirts.

Jimmy

So speaking of bikes and t-shirts, I finally jimmied a stand for my bike, broke out the youtube, and figured out how to adjust my derailleurs.  It turned out to be substantially easier than i'd thought, and definitely worth not paying $20 to a bike shop to have them do it for me, and now my bike rides like a dream, I have to find some mountain to ride over to take advantage of it. I also fixed my roommate's rear derailleur, and my other roommate's brakes.  Bike maintenance is great but Macbooks are not made for bike grease, and after having finally cleaned all the grime off my keyboard I had to do a lot of maneuvering with my elbow to make sure I was doing it right without turning my macbook into a dalmatian

Rounding off my life, we have the MTC, which also consumes a lot of my time.  A couple weeks ago, I picked up a whole new district headed for Brazil.  They're pretty great, and since I only speak portuguese to them, it's starting to get more fun as they're starting to be able to understand me and talk, so that's cool.  So yeah, business has ensued, I don't get to spend as much time having fun with people as I wish I did, but I can't complain, even if I sometimes do.

So that's life: bikes, cooking, school, and missionaries.  Shabby, but not too shabby.