The reason I love CIES.

I received this email the other day from my trainer, Kareem, who sent it out to everyone in the unit (F&O). It is in regards to our supervisor's birthday.

SUBJECT: In the 1970s a baby Noguchi was born...

On a stormy night in the Nagano suburbs, Taeko was born to Mr. and Mrs. Taeko. Fast forward through the 80’s and 90’s and now Taeko has everything she’s ever wanted including an incredibly good looking group of co-workers in F&O (and Athena). To celebrate we are doing a potluck in the Havel Room on Wednesday May 5th at 12:15. The gathering will last until someone passes out, the elastic snaps on my sweats, or we run out of food…we can take wagers on what happens first.

You all are the best, never change.

Righttime = good time. Mostly.

Well, I broke down yesterday. My nose was stuffed up so badly and I was so sick of being sick that I got in touch with my RA. She said that there is a clinic nearby called RightTime that used to be a pediatrician's office but now does mostly clinic/emergency/walk-in type stuff. So I gave the number a call and they had an appointment in like half an hour. I called at like 4pm. Well, I totally wasn't expecting that and I had class, but I was like...okay, we'll give it a try. However, upon booking it to the station to catch the bus...I waved as it passed by...and decided to cancel. I called back and did so, wanting to reschedule, but she told me that they only do same-day appointments. The phone lines open at 8am, though, to take appointments from 11am to midnight. So I resolved to make an appointment at 8am the next morning.

Class was okay. Got into an argument with a classmate over the Google vs China controversy (ironically, I was on China's side). Also turned in my paper. We have three assignments left in that class. This is honestly one of the most...assignment-ridden classes I've ever taken, all coupled with TWC and the internship. Ugh.

I had a crap time with the metro last night. Moving on...

This morning, I had planned on going to work for a couple hours at least. But upon gaining consciousness, I completely changed my mind. I felt like crap all over again, though at least I could breathe this time. I stayed awake for the next hour and a half, talking to my mom, watching Dancing with the Stars reruns on Hulu, and called to make an appointment. They had one at 11:20 that I took.

Napped for about an hour or so.

I checked the weather upon waking because it's been crazy lately. 70 one day, 40 the next. Today was another cold day, which I was grateful for, because all my T-shirts are dirty. (I desperately need to do laundry.) I vaguely saw that the chance of rain was around 50%, but didn't really pay attention.

Again, I got to the station as the bus was leaving. However, a very kindly man was driving and stopped for me when I waved him down. He was awesome and I hope his life is filled with love and happiness.

Got to the clinic, which was thankfully right at the bus stop.

Well, apparently this isn't really a clinic like I thought it was going to be. It's not a doc-in-the-box. This is an awesome facility. The check-in process was completely electronic, complete with a little iPad doodad that you fill out all your paperwork on. Sweet. Once you turn that in, they give you a buzzer thing like at a restaurant. When it buzzes, you go to your exam room. Btw, they have TVs everywhere, in the waiting room and exam rooms. So I got to watch Monsters, Inc, which brightened my day because that little girl is so cute. (Also, on the way to the exam room, I noticed that this place had a lab and x-rays within, too. Doubly impressed, and relieved, because I was pretty sure I was going to have to have a chest x-ray to either confirm or deny pneumonia as a diagnosis.)

Anyway, the amazing electronic technology continued with an automatic blood-pressure checker thing, and not the kind that you sit in. She wheeled the machine over to me, strapped me in, pressed Start, and let it go. Weird. Also took my temp, which was 97. My normal temp. Good that I don't have a fever any longer. My blood pressure was also fine, but my pulse was 82. Hey, I was in a doctor's office. They make me nervous.

The doctor eventually came in. Dr. Simms? Simmons? Something like that. She looked in my right ear and immediately said, "Okay, well, your ear's infected." She went to my left ear and made a disapproving sound. "It's even worse in this ear." She then looked in my nostrils and at my throat. "Well, both of your ears are infected and you also have a sinus infection."

Lovely.

She proceeded to fill out paperwork for about five minutes while I watched Sully try to get the little girl to sleep by showing her that there was no monster in her closet and miming the universal "sleep" signals. I guess the paperwork is the only thing wrong with this electronic system. They still have to fill that stuff out, and it still takes a long time. Anyway, I ended up with two prescriptions, Flonase and Amoxicillin. I made my way to the front desk.

The receptionist looked at my paperwork and said, "Oh, we can have your prescriptions filled here if you want." My eyebrows shot up. "Really? Great!" I sat down to wait, watching other people coming and going through the waiting room/lobby. A few minutes later, the pharmacy tech comes out and says that BCBS won't pay unless it's filled at an approved facility, which is not them. Okay, no problem. I live above a CVS, won't be that bad. Can check-out now please?

Except that now about three people had walked in and needed help checking in and everything. Sigh.

I waited. And waited. Had a good view of the bus stop. Also saw one bus coming and going. Oh, it was raining now, by the way. Didn't know if you caught the fore-shadowing earlier. I was miserable, because I knew it was going to be at least twenty minutes for the next bus, and I was also feeling crappy because my benadryl was wearing off, and I knew I was going to have to walk home in the rain without an umbrella or jacket and just blah. I had my own little raincloud over my head.

Finally the receptionist called me up and apologized several times for the wait, said she wouldn't make me wait any longer, just wanted to give me copies of my receipt and everything and I could leave. This made up for my crankiness somewhat. After all, there was only one person at the front desk.

Anyway, I left. Waited in the (thankfully covered) bus stop for about ten minutes or so, freezing. Walked home in the windy rain, stopped at CVS and stockpiled on junk food while waiting for my 'scripts, then headed upstairs, took them, and went to bed.

I'm not really noticing a difference, though people are saying that I sound better already. I'm still coughing and sneezing and my nose is alternating between sliding off my face and being so stuffed that I can't breathe. My head is also aching, and my ear started to as well. At least my throat doesn't hurt anymore?

But there you go. Double ear infections and sinusitis. Wow. My head is just completely infected right now.

Probably going to stay home again tomorrow because I'm worried about making people sick and still being contagious. Also because I'm not in bed yet.

Next time, someone make me go to the doctor if I'm sick for more than three days.

Our door should have a Biohazard sign on it.

If this was a dorm, I'd definitely do that.

3/4 of us are sick, all with different stuff. Alice is having stress issues that are culminating in physical symptoms, like mine is. She also had the sniffles, but I think that was cherry blossom stuff. Annie is having a wicked battle with her allergies, and they seem to be winning right now. I myself woke up with a scratchy throat yesterday, developed a fever last night, and now it feels like my chest is congested. Michelle...it's your turn...

I've decided to just not do my volunteer stuff. I wait until now to do it and now I'm sick and can't, so. Screw it. I don't get credit for it, anyway.

I did my informational interview this morning. I would grade myself horribly on it. I was sick and wasn't really prepared to do interview-style stuff, which was apparently what Dr. Cohen was expecting. Oh well. I did get information out of him, enough for 2-3 pages for sure. And he is a very nice person. One of the first things he said to me this morning is that I have a lovely laugh. I'm going to try to get his address from Dr. Campi so I can send him a thank you note.

In addition, I've done research for the green team stuff. I've also brainstormed on my US-China paper that's due Monday that really should be taking priority over everything else, but doesn't seem to be doing so. Sigh. Oh well. After that, I just have to do my reflections and final defense letter...and the rest of the stuff for class. Ugh, after Monday things are going to start going downhill. Finally. I hope. We'll see how much I can get done here this weekend.

Anyone who says we have seasons in Alabama is lying. Well, we have two. Winter and Summer. What I love about DC and Rockville is that there are clearly four seasons. We've seen things move from Winter to Spring and it just really is gorgeous. I'll share some pictures later.

Alright, I think I'm going to just sip my lemon tea and watch movies, maybe read. Maybe cook some pork buns. I lead an exciting life.

Stress = bad.

Hello, loyal readers.

Sorry that I haven't updated in like...two weeks...yikes. Things got really hard up here, and I was having a very tough time dealing with it all. It's too personal to go into here, but I started having physical symptoms of the massive amounts of stress I've been dealing with, and also having little breakdowns somewhat similar to panic attacks. Stress attacks? I don't know. But I got in touch with my doctor and she called in some sedative medication for me. Thankfully I haven't had to take any, but I feel relieved that it's there if I need it.

Things are still moving along. My laptop is awesome. I took an impromptu visit home a couple weeks ago. It turned out to be not as restful as I had hoped, as I had a bunch of stuff to do (spring clothes shopping, doctor visits, haircuts, etc). It was nice to be back home, though. I noticed some differences between there and DC: Southern life is a lot slower-paced than here, people are nice everywhere, the food is a lot better, etc. DC is kinda like a crossroads between North and South to me. You can run across Southerners, but there are yankees here, too. The majority of people are yankees, I think, or Southerners who are trying to fit in with the faster pace of life and therefore can't afford to be as nice as back home.

Anyway. I got philosophical there. Sorry.

I made a schedule of the stuff I have to finish and when I'm going to work on it. I think that has helped my mental stability greatly, along with having an emergency plan in case things do start to go wrong again. Sigh. There's just so much to be done...

I felt so tired yesterday that I canceled my volunteer shift. Despite sleeping about ten hours, I still took a nap of a couple hours. Alice did too, but she got home at about 3am and woke up at about 10am, I think. She was entitled. Anyway, we went down to see the Cherry Blossom Fireworks show doodad thinger last night. We sat on the opposite side of the Tidal Basin and watched them. Very pretty, but pictures didn't come out very well. It was dusk by the time we got there. We took some pictures anyway, and since Alice's camera had a flash, her picture-taking time lasted longer than mine. I plan to steal some pictures from her whenever she posts them.

I slept a lot today, as well. But according to my sleep graph, I was up and down all night, so that explains it. Going to just take it easy today, I think. Tomorrow, I may make a trip to Union Station, where the HQ of the Cherry Blossom Festival is. Last night we couldn't find any vendors anywhere (food or merchandise) and I want to buy some stuff. Let me know if you want something!

Gonna sign off now. I desperately need to do some laundry. Bleh.

Laptop woes...and laptop yays!

Well, my friends...last Saturday, I learned that soy sauce and laptops are not friends. In fact, they really hate each other.

We were eating Chinese dumplings, since we have six bags of them and never eat them anymore. I had finished mine, and was on my laptop, which I honestly never do, have my laptop near food, I mean. So I picked up my bowl to take it into the kitchen and it slipped...and splattered the leftover soy sauce all over my open laptop.

I immediately shut it down and wiped up all that I could. Did you know that soy sauce is greasy? Upon getting back on it, it appeared that everything was okay. It had been a crappy morning (crappy week, really) so before I had a mental breakdown, I went to take a nap.

When I woke up, my trackpad was being strange, and a couple of my keys didn't work. Sleep made me feel better, but I still felt like crying because my laptop was broken. I made an appointment to take it to the Genius bar the next day.

So, Sunday, rainy rainy Sunday, I trek out to Montgomery Mall to the Apple store. The guy says that they'll have to send it out to be repaired. He won't say that I spilled something on it on the off-chance that they don't find it. If they don't, they can replace everything for free because I have the protection plan. If they find it, they could requote me up to $755 plus tax. This made my jaw drop. He also said that I could take it to a third party certified repair shop, but that seemed really daunting seeing as I have to rely on public transportation to get anywhere. I called Dad, who spoke with the guy, and decided that he would rather them send it off because it's Apple, so we know they'd do a good job. I left my baby there, knowing I wouldn't see her again for 5-7 days.

This past week was horrible. Thankfully, I have awesome roommates who lent me their computers so I could get the stuff done that I needed to on Monday. But the first deadline for getting the applications into the new database at work was Monday, and we didn't meet it. We met it barely yesterday afternoon, when I was very near to strangling myself with my mouse cord while slitting my wrists with staples and choking myself with toner. I've done about 250 of these applications over the last three weeks. I want a day off. I especially want something new to do. Hopefully I'll get that something new to do on Tuesday.

In the middle of the week, I got a call from the Apple store. They found the soy sauce, but they were only going to charge $430 to have it cleaned up, thankfully. I think that might be their ploy. They suggest an outrageous price, so that when you're confronted with a less, but still outrageous, price, you actually feel relieved and agree to pay it.

Anyway, I trudged home last night and took the shortcut, which meant that I didn't come by the front desk to check for packages. I went out today to Maxim, the Chinese supermarket, to get some more pork buns (AGAIN no Chinese spinach! RAWR!) and Japanese candy. When I came back, I noticed a slip on our mailbox that said I had a package. Two packages, actually. I went to the front desk.

A laptop-sized box came out. I was trying not to hope it was my laptop. I was actually trying to figure out what the second package was, but he said he couldn't find one and I'm not expecting another one. So I told him to call me if they ran across anything.

I came upstairs, getting increasingly giddy because what else could this be? It HAD to be my laptop! I opened the box after some struggling (what kind of devil box do they ship these things in???) and saw nothing but padding. HAD to be a laptop! I dumped the padding out and my laptop slid out with it.

AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!

I shrieked and jumped around for a long time. I'm pretty sure Alice thinks I'm a freak.

So I have my laptop back. I missed her. I feel tons better now that I have it back, but this semester is still stressing me something awful. At least we're halfway through.

Mondays = evil.

And for more than just because it's the end of the weekend and the start of the work-week (at least in the U.S.).

On Mondays, I have programming. I know. It sounds like we're being brainwashed, right? In a sense, we are. We've had it pounded into our heads since we got here that we have to be making contacts, planning for life after graduation, getting our career tracks in order, figuring out what we're going to do and how we're going to do it, etc. That's pretty much what Monday programming is, 2-3 hours of some form of the above.

While this tactic is good for someone like me and Alice, who are 26 and mature and know who we are for the most part, I don't really believe anyone else is taking it seriously. Not that I think they should, because they're mostly 20 or 21 and still partying and having fun. Still able to function on five hours of sleep (I'm not anymore).

That's getting off-topic. Anyway, in addition to this programming, which takes place in the afternoon, and which we have to wear business dress for, I also have class on Monday nights from 6-9. I like the class, it's very interesting, but it's late, I'm tired, and the metro, for some reason, is hellaciously crowded.

I've learned a lot about myself in this first half of the semester. One thing is that I will never be comfortable in crowds. Ever. In a crowded place, my anxiety levels slowly rise and my mood slowly falls until I'm grinding my teeth or cursing everyone around me or launching into a panic attack. Thankfully tonight, just the one happened.

I've also learned that if I don't get a day to myself during the week, a day to relax and unwind and decompress, I get extremely exhausted. I think this also deals with my anxiety issues. Also has to deal with some of my spiritual beliefs, but as this is somewhat of a professional blog, I will not bore you with them here.

I have also learned that I am intensely curious about other cultures. I have three Chinese roommates, an intern from Spain working in the cube next to me, a Japanese supervisor, and a Japanese ex-patriot advisor. I've been having so much fun learning about new cultures and such. I always have tons of questions and I dearly thank these people for putting up with me.

This blog has just been all over the place, hasn't it? I'm sorry.

So today's programming was a career bootcamp, where we were sent a list of about 20 workshops to choose from and go to them. I chose International Employment: How to Make it Happen, and Getting a Job with the Federal Government. The first was a lot more informative. Tomoko, my advisor, gave it. She gave us the different ways you can get an international job, what you can do, tips about working internationally, and some cases of people she knows and where they ended up today and how they got there. The second, he started off by saying it was a 2 hour presentation that he was going to have to condense into 50 minutes, so he went so fast that I barely knew what he was talking about. Thankfully, I knew most of what he was talking about because my mom is a fed employee, so I knew about GS, and the side to apply, and what the application looks like. He did share tips on how to do your resume, though. That should come in handy.

My back is killing me, it's midnight, and I have to get up at 6:30am, so I'm signing off now. Sorry about the complete disorganization of this post. I'll do better next time, promise.

Er...hi?

Wow. Two weeks since I last updated. Sorry about that!

Well, the last time I wrote I mentioned that someone had stolen a package of mine. It's still MIA. I sent Caroline, the concierge, an email yesterday explaining that I still had not received anything, but I hadn't exactly been checking in at the front desk, either. I also said that my parents have re-ordered the case and it should be here Thursday. No response. So I'm going to assume that they're having a meeting about what to do.

The 27th was my birthday. My unit at the office (aww, I'm so grown up!) threw me a breakfast party complete with Krispy Kremes, half-bagel and sausage sandwiches, scrambled eggs with shallots, granola, yogurt, grapes, etc. It was really yummy. And Taeko gave me flowers. ♥ I have the best supervisor ever.

My parents came up on Friday night for my birthday weekend. We...I don't remember what we did. Oh! We went to the Sichuan Pavilion. They enjoyed the authentic Chinese. I think they liked the dumplings more than the buns, though, which is the complete opposite of me. But if you're not an expert with chopsticks, it's kinda hard to get use to how to eat the buns.

Saturday night we had my birthday dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. Mmmmm. We didn't tell them it was my birthday, but they brought out my piece of cheesecake with a candle in it and "Happy Birthday to you!" written on the plate in syrup. Oh, and rainbow confetti all over. Good stuff.

Sunday, we went shopping at Montgomery Mall, which is a mall that is really close to here that I had no clue about. It's really easy to get to, too: take the metro and hop on a bus. Takes you right to the mall. But it's huge and awesome. Macy's is there, and if you have a uterus, you probably know about the huge sale they were having. So I stocked up on short-sleeved shirts for when the weather warms up, and got some new work pants, too. I also finally got my hands on a cashmere/wool coat that I've been wanting for a long time. The other coat I have is just too bulky. This coat is awesome and I love it so. They had an ivory one, too, which looked gorgeous on me and which I've also been wanting for forever, but we couldn't afford both and I wouldn't be able to wear the ivory one all the time. It would get dirty way too easily.

Monday we had programming, which was horribly boring and I read through the entire thing. They never took attendance, which really irritates me. If they're not going to do that, I'm just going to stay home during boring ones. Of course, next week is Career Boot Camp, which should at least be informative. But there are some other events that I have no interest in whatsoever. Also had class that night, where we talked about beastiality among the Mongolians and the baboon-esque habits of the Tibetans before Han Chinese showed up. Interesting, it is.

Yesterday and today was back to work stuff. I've been waiting on access to this system for at least a week. I finally got the email with my account info today and I only have limited access, and it's limited in a way that disallows me to do my work. So now Taeko's trying to get me full access. In the meantime, she's entrusted her login information to me, which was quite a shock to the rest of the team. ^_^

I've had a cough for the past few days. It's a tickle below my voicebox that feels like phlegm or something, but I never cough anything up. It's getting on my nerves, though. Hopefully I can get over it this weekend. I'm thinking of taking a half day Friday so I can recover early. I'm totally having my PJ day this weekend, since I didn't get one last weekend.

That's about all in the life of me right now. I want the weather to warm. I'm still addicted to pork buns. And I'm waiting for the dryer to go off so I can go to sleep. Life could be worse.

Another pretty crap day.

Well, today was not so good, as you can tell by the subject. I've tweaked my hours at work to Tues-Fri 8-5. It's tiring working that extra hour, and I have no idea why. It's not proportionately tiring. It's way more so. Odd.

Anyway, I ran out of work this morning and opened my big mouth to my supervisor about it, who told me to tell her and she would always find me something to do. I started doing the sudoku puzzle in my Express newspaper (free, daily) and she came by.

"Hi! How are you doing?"
":P I'm so bored."
"Come with me."

It scares me that she's always so efficient like that, and always has this grin like "you asked for it." The Japanese. They are an efficiently scary people.

She ended up loaning me to another department, since mine won't need me until next week. The department is Global Services. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but it involves more databases and spreadsheets. And a headache that's been going on for a while.

See, their old system was...well, old. They were moving to a new system with the apps from this year, and had all the scholars fill out the online apps directly into this new system. But now the new system is broken. So the apps have to be moved back to the old system. BY HAND. Like HAND-TYPING. That's where I come in. Because I am an intern and no one in their right mind who was getting paid for this would do it. But me? I do it for free. :D

The apps are about 24 pages long. It took me about 2 and a half hours to do four of them. I thought that was it. Nope! Global Services Manager Anneke comes by my desk that afternoon when I'm finished with the first four.

"Were you okay with the apps?"
"Oh, yeah, I was fine, no problem."
"Okay, I'm gonna give you more to do."

By "more" she meant "a helluva lot more." I got two done and was working on the third before the system hiccupped on me, I lost all the data, and only have fifteen minutes left. So instead of breaking down to cry, I left for the day. Seemed progressive at the time.

On the way home on the metro, I started feeling ill. I read about halfway, then had to put my book away and just breathe and concentrate on not throwing up on the lovely shiny shoes of the businessman standing next to me. I made it out of the station feeling much better, but still craptastic. I got to the apartment and got an email from my dad asking if I'd picked up the laptop case he shipped to me. I tracked it on FedEx and it had indeed been delivered. I stole my roommate's shoes to go downstairs and pick it up. In my pajamas. Because I just don't care after a long day's work.

I got down there and the attendant was someone I didn't know and hadn't seen before. I've made a point to make friends with the attendants. I told her my apartment number and my name and she said the package had already been signed for.

...What?

I said that I had picked something up a couple of days ago. She said, "Oh, maybe it hasn't been logged yet." And disappeared behind the desk. She came back a few minutes later saying that she didn't see it and then showed me the log where it had been signed. All I could see were a bunch of strange loopies that looked nothing like letters, much less my name, and much much less my signature. I told her so and she looked panicked, kind of like she didn't know what to do. "Oh...um...oh my god...Okay, I'll leave a note here for Caroline in the morning." She wrote down a strange, short-hand synopsis on the situation on a post-it. I explained that I would ask my roommates if they'd picked something up for me. She said okay. I knew none of my roommates had done that. They're all Asian. They have gorgeous, neat lettering and don't know cursive or whatever that language was that was supposed to represent my "signature."

So I've had a package stolen. It was a macbook case from Speck, so it wasn't anything really expensive. I'm disappointed because 1) it seems like Fate has decided I should not have this case because it was supposed to be a xmas present and has been backordered these last three months only to now disappear and 2) I love Fenestra and the security and the apartments and location and everything. I don't want to have to fight with them over paying for this if it was, indeed, stolen. It's their fault. They will pay for it. I just don't want it to get ugly.

And now I've stayed up way past the time I planned to go to bed. I'm looking forward to tomorrow being Friday, even though Saturday I have a field trip with my class to the Freer/Sackler galleries and then to Chinatown for some chow. At least I don't have to leave until 11.

Wow, long time no see...

I haven't updated in a while, pretty much because nothing big has been going on. We were snowed in for a whole week, with no metro or bus service, and there was a cabin fever epidemic. Thankfully, there were a couple of places in the town square open, and our RAs put on a Valentine's Day card-making party last Thursday for us to make cards for the residents of a nursing home. They also had free cookies and candy and drinks. Yay!

Our vacuum cleaner doesn't suck. Which sucks. (I love that joke.) We told our RA, Ann, about it and she's put in an order for a new one. Yay, we get a new vacuum cleaner!

We went to the Sichuan Pavilion across the street one night. It is really authentic Chinese food. Since we had Alice and Michelle with us, we ordered in Mandarin and everything. They had these pork buns that were the most flavorful thing I've ever put in my mouth. Definitely my favorite Chinese food, followed by the frozen mini-buns we got at Maxim, the Chinese supermarket (not as juicy).

Friday, the government was actually open, but the metro was not serving our area, so we couldn't go into work. I had to take a personal day. :( I guess that's okay, because I get five and I was wondering what I would do with them. They're expecting more snow tonight, but just a little, so tomorrow should be a work day. I hope so. I had just learned to navigate that office and now I'm going to be lost all over again. But the first time we got the big snow, they only predicted 2-4 inches. I don't really trust meteorologists anyway. I think they work for the bread and milk companies.

We did go to this restaurant called Bobby's Crab Cakes. It was...strange. We went there Saturday night, we made reservations for six (even though only five of us went). Their food prices are pretty high, so we were expecting a sort of upscale restaurant. Nope. It was one step up from a bar. We waited forever for our food, too, and it's not like they had tons of orders. There were maybe six tables in the entire place. It was just a strange experience. The food, when it finally came, was delicious, but...because of everything else, I don't know that I'd want to go back.

Oh! I also signed up for some volunteer shifts at the Cherry Blossom Festival. I think I'm working three weekends, so far. Should be fun! If you're in the area, come see me!

Today, I need to finish revising my Individual Development Plan, and write my second reflection, both of which are due tomorrow. Alice and I are planning to cook dumplings for lunch, and then all three of my roomies have a makeup class tonight, so I'll have the apartment to myself again. Will probably go to Five Guys for dinner...

Snowed-in Craziness.

I haven't updated in forever because we've been hit by Snowmageddon. Yesterday was the first and only day in the past five days that metro has been running, and it was at half speed and for only a few hours. But for those few hours, I went out and got more supplies because this snow is never going to end.

Since we haven't been able to eat out, we've been cooking a lot of Chinese food. Tonight we're cooking dumplings, which we've cooked before, and pork buns, which we have not cooked before. Should be interesting!

Anyway, I wanted to update this little snippet of fun that happened just a few minutes ago.

Me: So what's your favorite English word?
Alice: "Cookie."
Michelle: "Ice cream!"
Me: No, not your favorite food, your favorite word!
Alice and Michelle: "JENNIE!"

They're so silly.