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edgar mortimer kingston-mouse the 3rd
an upstanding british citizen
who wears pocket squares
and always takes his tea at 4 o'clock.
with biscuits.
also cheese.
for he is, after all, an upstanding mouse.

(the first in an up-coming series
of fountain pen drawings
by yours truly)

shadow play

http://gizmodo.com/5504569/103-shapely-shadows?skyline=true&s=i

freddi fish still nuances my life

you can't have the super-duper-dooka-booka-poly-gizmo*

unless you bring me a clock ...

*

my name's paJAMa SAM!

i'm gonna capture darkness and put him in a lunchbox!!

all of a sunday afternoon

a couple of sundays ago:

the work of midnight to 4am

after church while I was baking

tada!

cheesecake with strawberries

so I bought my own fluted angel food pan and tried it out

and it totally failed

sad day

the bottom burned, the top wouldn't crack right, the whole outer layer was tough

it still tasted yummy

but I couldn't stand how it looked.

so I shaved it.

yum cake guts

shaved

story about the 7 minute frosting:

I made it using a make-shift double boiler

just from 2 pots that fit just right so that the water wouldn't touch the pot

but apparently something with the 2 types of metal made the top pot expand

so essentially I had a pressure cooker going with no outlet

I was so freaked out it was going to explode and burn my face off or something

but I kept the heat on just long enough to cook it

then shut it off and kept beating it

the peaks could have been a little stiffer, but it worked

successful 7 minute frosting! huzzah!

beautiful.

but most importantly- delicious.

krishna krishna hare hare

yesterday was the krishna temple's holi festival of colors

and since this is my last chance before I head back east (!)

I wanted to go

what happens is this:

everyone comes and throws colored powdered chalk at each other

and at a given moment,

we all throw the chalk up in the air at the same time

to welcome spring :)

it was so awesome - hundreds of people, crowd surfing,

singing and dancing to the hare krishna song

beauty joy love

all the good stuff

here's a video:

before the fact, with my roommate amy

we were being cute and wearing our environmentalist shirts together

the krishna temple

camilsters and me

how is it that camilla and the rest of world got all pink and cute

and I just look like a raccoon?

hey everybody, meet my boyfriend: andy :)

we make a good pair of raccoons

we kind of just look like we got beat up in some backstreet of london

the view down spanish fork way

open up

well, here it is! my first original composition. actually, that's not true, but my first one that I've done all by myself and finished up completely. I wrote the first half on february 7th, the second half on february 15th, and wrote the music a few days later. I didn't get around to filming it (my version of recording, I guess) until recently. le voila :)

open up from tina verbena on Vimeo.

recent musics

regina spektor - far

marina & the diamonds

andrew bird - andrew bird & the mysterious production of eggs

elliott smith - either/or

the avett brothers - murder in the city

grizzly bear - veckatimest

yo la tengo - summer sun

the decemberists - picaresque

my morning jacket - z

voxtrot - real life version

angus and julia stone

great lake swimmers

bonnie "prince" billy

jonsi - boy lilikoi

little boots - remedy

the magnetic fields

love love love

the fabulous four in marseille

marseille pics! drew just put up a bunch on facebook that I don't have and they made me so so happy and so so wanting to be in france right this very very second, that I had to share. this was quite possibly my best five days in france.

l to r: me, mathias, kate & drew

all of a sunday

les calanques

our private beach ...

the cat wall!!!

I really really like this picture :)

resurrection fern

resurrection fern from tina verbena on Vimeo.

classes

it is super-duper hard to believe that I'm almost graduated and going to grad school. I really could have graduated in april, but I'm taking the spring and summer to do/finish my honors thesis instead of cramming it all into this semester and dying. there was enough dying last semester to last me a long while. so I'll be here in utah valley for the spring and summer terms, which I'm quite excited about - I've never been here in utah's prettiest time. year one I went home to take care of the boys and year two I was in france. so, since I have some leisurely time to end my college career, I'm having some fun this summer!

here are my classes:

spring term -
lds marriage & family
flexibility
basic backpacking
rockclimbing
senior oral proficiency evaluation - french

summer term -
the aesthetic of crime in french film - french
international trade & finance - econ
senior portfolio seminar - french

dream update

1 - navigating dark and complicated metro systems with allison, the escalators were short and quick, they kept checking our pass navigo.

I taught the first ten minutes or so of a preschool class of 3, victoria and two other girls, before celesta, the teacher, taught the rest. I was excited about the resume prospects.

in a large titanic-like boat, hollow inside, sailing against a large rock outcropping or jetty that scraped from time to time but wasn't dangerous.

charles came home and jeremy tidd, they were camping in large beige campers, three, charles didn't know that I knew jeremy because of amanda and sabine.

2 - with amanda, trowbridge was the teacher, dance class in a large ballroom with wooden floors, kind of like french castles wood floors, and a huge china cabinet - amanda lost the plate. lindsay was there in a cute dress.

3 - charlie was in the sherlock holmes movie, but it was actually a play, went to see it with allison, it was in a weird amusement-park-like place, girl kept forgetting her lines, she was tiny, like a small child. at home, gregory was trying to finagle something. I kept looking at the clocks and they were 2 hours ahead cause it was virginia and I kept freaking out cause I thought I was late for the GRE.

4 - held a certain boy's hand on a crashing airplane that ended up not crashing. though the hand-holding was unrelated to the crashing of the plane.

tweets of the past

"utah, my congratulations - you have rained a rain worthy of the praises of a virginian."

"just hanging out waiting for something anything"

"TA just shot a rubberband at me while I was napping during the break. he is rapidly losing cool points. rapidly."

"worms are so dumb. stay in the ground you fools! sidewalk is suicide."

"I spy ducks on a date"

"oh my tulips are so lovely. flower market, I love you."

"definitely over-doing it packing things into a day. my feet are going to fall off. for the record, I LOVE SHOPPING. also, my new genie pants."

"marseille. you are beautiful and energetic and a welcome respite. I don't want to leave you, but it's too late. p.s. i love you"

"what if all of the gum stuck on sidewalks sprouted into morning glories when it rained?"

"was packing last night (woot!) dressed in the lightest thing I own and sweat was STILL dripping off my ELBOW. a/c I MISS YOU."

"people are speaking ... english. say what??? oh right, I'm in london, not paris. it's strange to hear my voice come out in english."

"got another haircut ... ahhh i love having no hair"

"saw an actual pocket protector for the first time. was that old man putting it to good use? oh yes -- you had BETTER believe it."

"is infinity linear? there's no start and no stop, but does it matter which direction you're going in? I guess I mean, is time reversible?"

"the morning bus driver is such a wench. next time she's rude to me, unh uh, I'm not taking that crap. I PAID AND NOW I'M RIDING. THE END."

"my french professor is totally wearing a wooden tie. I didn't know that any such thing existed ..."

"must. resist. urge. to buy hippie shoes and go trekking through redwood forest."

"discovered fleet foxes. loving fleet foxes. cannot stop listening to fleet foxes. suggest you all do the same."

"don't you hate it when you're about to twitter something totally awesome, and then someone texts you or something and you forget ... yyup."

"just walked past a guy shaving on campus ... I thought such things only happened on I-95"

"Andy Hall is singing my heart out in the living room. That man needs to hurry up and finish his cd."

"my eyeballs are about to fall out. who knows why. I do not."

"wherever I live, whenever I live there, I want a gingko tree. That is all."

"I mocked myself so you wouldn't mock me."

"travesty (english) = travestie (french) = transvestite = ... awkward"

"if I'm going to go crazy, I opt for mad giraffe disease - in which I think I am actually a giraffe and spend my days being totally awesome"

"laughing is dangerous for me - sometimes I get light-headed, sometimes it gives me headaches. but I love it anyway. like cranberry juice yum"

"I need to re-learn how to eat - my appetite has shrunk to almost nothing. I guess that's project #1 for christmas break - eat an awful lot"

"just took my tights off while sitting at my desk at work (they were driving me crazy). I am officially the sneakiest person I know."

"I just bought a giant pom pom - you know, like a big yarn ball. it is awesome. I'm never putting it down."

"I don't know what to do with google buzz. it's stealing my twitter-able thoughts"

"apparently I bite my tongue while I sleep. GREAT."

"he pegged me for a mac .. if only"

I like cleaning

today I:

- went to class even though I was sleepy and didn't want to get out of bed

- was nice to phil, even though he didn't get my book back to me in time so that I could do the reading for class

- played my viola for 3 hours

- cleaned: the vanities, sinks and mirrors, the toilet, the table, tidied the living room, vacuumed the apartment, put my clothes away, cleaned off my desk, and took out the trash. take THAT, apartment!

aaaand

I GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL!!!

somebody wants me!

my number one school wants me!

university of pittsburgh counts me as one of their own and I could not be more excited. the email saying my admission status was complete caught me off guard - I wasn't expecting acceptance answers for awhile yet. so I went over to my application site, extremely nervous, and as soon as I saw what it said, I was screaming and jumping all over the room. happy happy day :)

just wanted to let everyone know how freaking excited I am.

gentle vandals of the night

I had all of these grandiose plans to submit a bunch of my poems and maybe even my morocco short story for some writing contests put on by the university. I keep running into the sign for it in the lobby of the JFSB on my way to french class and I keep meaning to look up the submission deadlines. and I didn't until tonight. and everything was due on february 15th, darn it. now I have to find other things to submit to that don't cost me money to participate, because I am hesitant to believe that I could actually win and get some returns on that risk payment. but I did find 3 or 4 university magazines looking for submissions still that I will send some poem-trees off to.

while we're talking about poetry, I was reading through some old blog posts and came across this little phrase that I did not intend to be poetry, but IS.

"there are fat moths dancing spirals around the room, like gentle vandals of the night, like windswept lovers weaving patterns in the chi."

I think I will take it and elaborate. it makes me sad that people think moths are creepy. I think they are quite wonderful.

wa-CHA

started out badly, ended just as badly, but all-in-all, a good month for posting :)

things:
- I presented at an academic conference in cedar city, which involved a road trip with the hurlbuts, a king bed to myself, severe procrastination, success, and delayed stress. oh and a dinosaur museum.
- I finally did my laundry. hallelujah.
- I really wish I had a car.
- I really wish I had time to play and sing music all day long.
- I'm sick of school.