mondays are for learning

Mondays are generally the most hated day of the week, bringing the beginning of the school and work week. But today i realized that Mondays are actually pretty great. (it helps that my Monday schedule isn't too overwhelming but whatever). Today was a great day full of learning!

We've started the geometry unit in Math Education, come to find out that there are multiple kinds of geometry. Who knew? Imagine this: you start at your house and travel 10 miles south. You then travel 10 miles west and another ten miles north. Have you arrived back at your house? If you said no, you are correct. If you said yes, you are correct. How is this possible, you ask? Well according to Euclidean Geometry, it isn't possible because the plane we work on is 2-dimensional. But should we work with Spherical Geometry (like on the globe) this situation would be true.

Then in Cognitive Development we've been discussing memory and encoding. Always a fascinating subject and my teacher's dry sense of humor just makes it better. Last week he told us about how certain experiences are automatically encoded into our Long Term Memory (LTM). For example, he remembers how to perform heart surgery on a dog because they actually had to do that when he was a grad student. But does he remember what he had for breakfast two months ago? Probably not.

in Literacy we read a few articles about the topic on Monday and discuss them in class on Wednesday. This week was comprehension. The Rosenblatt article? Phenomenal! i actually saved some of the quotes because i love them so much. So here are the key points i found about comprehension

• "In any linguistic event, any process will be affected by the physical and emotional state of the individual"
• "The “meaning” does not reside ready-made or “in” the text or “in” the reader but happens or comes into being during the transaction between reader and text"
• "Writers facing a blank page, like readers approaching a text, have only their individual linguistic capital to draw on"
• "Writing is always an event in time, occurring at a particular moment in the writer’s biography, in particular circumstances, under particular external as well as internal pressures"
• "Because each individual’s experience is unique, differences due to social, ethnic, educational, and personal factors exist"
• "Writing deepens the reader’s understanding of the importance of paying attention to diction, syntactic positions, emphasis, imagery, and conventions of genre"

Subaru: Cut the Cord

No, i am not getting a deal from Subaru or anything. This commercial came on and my heart just melted. Adorable!

AWESOME!

i recently acquired The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha. Who knew a trip to FedEx to get a box would end up in me finding a book? So Calah and i thought it'd be fun to write my own thoughts on the awesome things and maybe add my own.

(The following Awesome Things are a reflection of this past week)

Awesome Thing #1: The smell of frying onion and garlic. Seriously, i don't know about you, but i LOVE that smell. Especially on a Fast Sunday when you walk to a friend's apartment and they're making food that involves onion and garlic for the Break the Fast. You walk in and the heavenly scents serenade you and your knees just about buckle underneath you. Ahhh.....

Awesome Thing #2: Wearing sandals when you shouldn't be wearing sandals. FYI sandals in my case means flip-flops. i will wear flip-flops whenever i possibly can. All the time. Even though it is technically still winter, if there is not snow on the ground (the ground where i am walking) then i will be wearing my flip-flops. Sure i get the occasional comments from people who ask if i'm freezing but don't you worry, i'm just fine. :)

things i love and things i hate

Today on my way home from work i ran into something i hate. (No, i did not literally run into something. The occurrence of something i hate happened and led me to consider this list because i needed to think of things i love to make the angry things-i-hate-thoughts go away).



things i H-A-T-E:

- dirty dishes 
- awkward social situations
- when my pen runs out of ink
- being late
- smoggy sunlight
- being sick 
- slow drivers
- when my flight is late
- breaking a nail 
- walking behind slow people (i may be short but if i'm walking somewhere i just want to get there)
- running out of food
- hitting snooze too many times 
- boring movies
- feeling overwhelmed
- creepy crawly things 
- when my favorite show isn't on Hulu for viewing yet (i'm not about to pay for Hulu+)
- but the one thing that just takes the cake in this list is when drivers are absolute jerks because they can't take the extra 30 seconds to turn around like a normal person (i shouldn't even say 'cake' and this hateful thing in the same breath because i love cake).

See, there's this one traffic light on a main road where the far right lane become right turn only. Nothing abnormal, right? Wrong. Because right across the light from that lane there's a bus stop which means there's plenty of room for people to zoom (illegally) through the light and cut off the folks who got over when the sign clearly stated the lane was right turn only. Or they WAIT the whole light cycle in the turn lane to then zoom in front of you. Seriously? You can't just turn right and turn around to get back to the light? Well blah to you, sirs and madams!



things i L-O-V-E:

- getting a new book
- Dr Pepper
- walking into Barnes & Noble
- playing with my nieces and nephews
- singing at the top of my lungs (when the key is in my favor and i actually sound decent)
- rainy days
- the Christiansen mix of Dr Pepper and Diet Coke
- my teddy bear from Brave (one of the cutest things you've seen in your whole life)
- hot chocolate
- zombie shows
- Pitch Perfect
- sweat pants
- cupcakes
- Tinker Bell
- Joe Bandido's salsa
- mismatching my socks
- Cupcake Wars
- dyeing my hair
- reading
- my family (and probably yours too because i'm sure they're fab folks)
- Casa Salza salsa
- baking
- drink runs
- going to sleep (have you ever been so excited that you get to finally go to sleep that you are suddenly too excited and can't actually fall asleep? ya...happens frequently...)
- being introduced to new songs/artists
- fairy tales
- finding new recipes
- getting my haircut
- cover songs
- getting an A on a test/assignment
- books with 'awesome' in the title
- Disney movies
- being done with classes for the day
- painting my nails with an accent nail
- learning interesting things that make me more excited to be a future educator
- FRIENDS (the TV show)
- friends (as in my real life friends)



Notice i made the hateful list significantly shorter because i would rather not burden you so deeply with my crazy. But can you tell which hateful thing inspired the list making? Ya, me neither (sarcasm intended) 

it's a cupcake kind of world

if you know me in real life (or even from my about me section) then you know that i love cupcakes. The odd thing is that it's only been in the last year that this has become apparent.

it all started with the discovery of Dr Pepper cupcakes on Pinterest. Dr Pepper is one of my all time favorite things in the whole wide world, so Dr Pepper cupcakes have to be equally amazing, right? After perusing a few recipes i found one that wasn't quite so involved and my love of cupcakes was born.

i soon began searching all over Pinterest for the best cupcake recipes i could find. See it isn't necessarily the eating of the cupcakes i love most (although i do love to eat them); it's the creating. Pulling all of the ingredients together and coming up with something fantastically delicious. The decorating makes them almost too cute to eat and then i get to share them. One of the greatest feelings is someone telling me that my cupcakes are delicious; seriously, hands-down one of the best.

My love of baking has led to some changes in my life goals. i'm still ecstatic to become an elementary school teacher. This semester has been my favorite because i just love my classes. i'm also only a year away from actually getting to teach and i just can't wait. But someday i want my passion for baking to become more than just passing them out to my friends. i've seen everything there is on Cupcake Wars, Cupcake Champions and been to several cupcakeries in the area. Someday i hope to open my own cupcakery (which i don't know if it's actually a word but i'm using it anyways). i want to teach for a while and then maybe take some business classes and get a degree in management or something. i can open up shop and share my love of cupcakes with the rest of the community. i would say world but i'm trying to be realistic.

So, in honor of this awe-inspiring new life goal i would like to share with you the few cupcake items i have collected over these last few months.

Mickey Mouse measuring cups, oven mitt, and molds (courtesy of Miss Calah):

Sifter, frosting tips, cupcake cookie cutters, and bottle for decoration:

Measuring spoons with cupcakes printed on the metal (courtesy of Miss Momo)

music pt. 65

i am obsessed with music. This usually wouldn't be a problem, except i can't decide on a song. Usually i find a favorite song and listen to it on repeat for days and days. When i say repeat i mean i listen to it probably 100 times each day. Then i find a new favorite song and the cycle continues. But this last week...i've had several songs and i have a hard time deciding which one i want to listen to. i just keep skipping through them, listening to half of a song, and then switching again. i've posted them below so that you can feel my pain, because they really are all phenomenal songs.

Paperman by Disney

if you haven't seen the new Disney short film 'Paperman' then you need to click on the link at the end of this post right this very instant. Seriously. Get to it!

What you will see is the cutest ever love story told in less than 10 minutes. Well, after the beginning of 'Up' when Ellie and Carl fall in love, obviously. 'Paperman' is simple, sophisticated, and absolutely adorable.

Kudos to Disney for bringing magic to the mundane real world.


Paperman - Full Animated Short Film