The Compressed Version of the Past 6 Weeks

Everyone is busy. Mostly, there are theses that need to be written/are being neglected. And it's cold outside. While there hasn't been another snowpocalypse, we've had arctic temperatures twice, several inches of snow, and temperatures that hover in the high teens and low twenties. Nonetheless, the nastiness of this particular winter is old news now, so much so that I don't even find that much joy from complaining about it anymore.

Actually, a lot of things that have happened over the quarter are now old news. For instance, we:

• Saw The O'My's at the Emporium, a bar that features old-school arcade games.
• Celebrated Chinese New Year with dim sum.
• Hosted Molly, Harriett's study abroad friend, for the weekend.
• Saw a taping of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, that featured resident paleontologist Paul Sereno and took place at our very own UChicago campus.
• Waited two hours to get a table at Rangoli, an Indian restaurant in Bucktown. And the wait was totally worth it. Seriously.
• Went to the Field Museum to see the Field Museum's exhibit on the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Or rather Harriett and I did. While we were waiting for the bus to take us home, we were hit by a tsunami of gray snowy slush by a very inconsiderate snow plow.
• Have managed to remain miraculously caught up with most of our TV shows.

Each of these things probably merit their own blog post, but unfortunately, I can only give you the greatest hits list right now. I know, you're extraordinarily disappointed, but there is a glimmer of luck because I'm trying to avoid doing my homework, and I just uploaded pictures. So, here's a quick recap of our most two recent weekends.

Two weeks ago, we celebrated Emily's 21st birthday! If you asked any of us about it any time before 8:30 pm on Saturday evening, we would have pretended not to know what you were talking about. That's because it was a surprise! And we actually pulled it off! At one point, Emily walked through the kitchen as I was making her gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cinnamon cupcakes (which were pretty tasty), and it was still all good.

This past weekend, or rather the weekend that we are still in, we celebrated Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day coincided with College Break Day, which is known colloquially as Suicide Prevention Day. While intended to be a lovely respite that the University offers their college students every year, College Break Day is a break in name only. For me, I have only one class on Friday anyway and always something I should be doing. (This year, break for me was waking up at 9:00 instead of 8:00 am.) However, in the evening, Boyer's Vineyard had a Galentine's Day celebration, i.e. an excuse to make tacos and bake desserts.

Our apartment also got roses!

The card reads: "Happy Valentine's Day! To: the girls. From: the boys."

In short, February has involved a lot of celebration and a lot of cupcakes.

Okay, that's all I got. Back to work for me!