we ended up staying in ventura straight through till last night, for my aunt and uncles 30th anniversary party. it was really fun- ate all sorts of crazy gourmet food, and was fascinated by the caterers. (i want to be a caterer now!) they arranged the food all pretty. ;o)

saturday i read "the hundred secret senses" by amy tan (she also wrote "the joy luck club" and "the kitchen god's wife.") i recommend the book- i kept reading reading reading till i finished it at 1.30 am.

oh- one of my roomates went to our apartment and everything was fine- nothing fell and broke. although her boyfriend's sister who lives farther away from the epicenter than us had an entire bookshelf fall and break everything around and in it. :oP

i hope you all had a nice christmas :o)
i did.

still in ventura- i will probably come home tonight and then be back here sunday for my aunt and uncle's anniversiary party. my mom actually made reference to me leaving for slo at that point-- but i dont know if i'll want to.

i don't know anything about my apartment, cause carolyn's sister in law got sick so they didn't go to slo.

in other news, i once again have to pretend that my family name wasnt changed three times in the last 80 or so years. this time it wasn't that i had to pretend that my name wasn't changed when i was in junior high... no, i have to pretend that my great grandparents always had the last name that i was born with- not that they changed it when my grampa was a teenager.

STUPIDNESS! :oP

i had to send fake graduation announcement name cards with our old last name to my relatives back east when i was a senior in high school. i will refuse to do the same for college graduation. i am sarah drake, and i'm proud of my name. my great grandma is dead, and she was supposedly the person that would be offended if she knew we changed our name. the truth is, she wouldn't have been. its all my grampa.

skiing was fun and i did quite well (or so i'm told). but that's not what i care about right now.

i missed a 6.5 earthquake in san luis obispo! in some ways, earthquakes are pretty fun... of course, i've never had one happen so close to my home before. yes. as i practiced my snowplow move, san luis was a shakin'. hopefully, this scenario did not take place:

carolyn's computer monitor falls off its precarious perch, shattering expensively.

our wobbly pantry shelving unit dances around, spilling glass bottles and jam jars. the ants rejoice.

my lovingly collected california pottery teacups and saucers clatter and fall off the speakers on the dresser, shattering into collectible teal, periwinke, yellow and green shards.

we weren't really expecting an earthquake- i expected it back home in orange county, not in slo. those are only a few of our terribly breakable non-earthquake-proof items. carolyn's brother should be going to slo tommorow to see what damage, if any (cross your fingers) our apartment sustained. it has to be something, cause we're only 40 miles from the epicenter and my parents felt the quake here, 280 miles away. i'm nervous follllks.

tommorow i (and you) should find out.

oh yeah- i keep reading quotes from online news sources about how its great that the earthquake hit in a "sparsely populated area." hmm.... i guess i don't think of it that way. at least two people died in paso robles, and it WAS after all a 6.5. the northridge quake was only a 6.7. earthquakes are earthquakes and they suck.

i'm going skiing tommorow with ben, his brother tom, and sister in law chiara.

i will try to be optimistic about it- i can't wait to meet tom and chiara and it will be ben's first time really experiencing snow...
but i didn't like the last time (only time) i went skiing. i was in 6th or 7th grade, and my mom accidentally pushed me off the chair lift a few feet before it reached ground. i fell down an embankment and lost my skis. (and i was afraid of the chair lift BEFORE this happened)

but, yes. it should be nice, even if skiing isn't quite my expertise

i really really really want the book "fast vegetarian feasts" by martha rose shulman.
and it is out of print, which makes this difficult.

WHY, used book stores, do you never have this book!?!?! even the new and used cookbook store in new york city did not have you!

my most common typo is probably typing urls with .xom instead of .com. hey everybody!! let's go to hotmail.xom!

of course o i hgave have halost lots of th typos and if i leaver leave therm them all in it looks liek like this.

3.703, baby.

i went to my grandparents house today. as soon as i walked in, my grampa shoved their new puppy at me. the poor stupid thing immediately peed all over my shirt.

i dont like cocker spaniels. and if you've had three or four (or more?) cocker spaniels named shawny, do you really need to name ANOTHER one the same thing?

my house (parent's house) is crazny. they were putting on baseboards when i came yesterday, and there was sawdust and chunks of wood and a saw on the carpet. the carpet is all cut up so that they could put the baseboard in, and they've been cleaning their putty knives on the carpet so theres all these white spots everywhere. the new carpet supposedly comes tommorow, which will be loads of fun. i'm still unsure about where our furniture will go during this process. its already pulled to the middles of all the rooms. (woohoo. fun times) i've been warned to watch where i walk, because there have been stray nails and tacks on the ground :oP

i hate packing. i want to just throw things into my car. pull the car up in my neighbor's driveway and then toss things through the windows from my second floor balcony. that would be good

stupid manipulative country songs. i don't like it when they write a song specifically to make people cry. grrrrr

hey, kids! its time to email santa!

we need to make fondue at my apartment when we get back from break. mmmm, fondue.

i dont want to study for my physical science final that i have tommorow morning. i'm a silly lazy girl. i want ice cream, not studying.

my calculations tell me that it will probably be the second to last final of my undergraduate career

today was my last day doing yard duty at the school... i hope student teaching will be more fun. my master teacher gave me a photocopy of a class picture, so i can start learning their names.

tonight i went through my clothes and put some of the more ratty things in the far reaches of my dresser. i'm going to have to dress up 5 days a week from january till june. AHHHHH!

the USPS wants to sue The Postal Service. bastages.

the danielson familie movie!!!!!

i'm going to make carolyn reallyreally mad and put on fetch the compass kids

a haiku for you

pimple in my ear
mysterious and painful
why did you come here?

i spent an hour and a half this afternoon in the first grade class i'll be student teaching in come january.

i keep realizing how much "miss drake" sounds like "mistake"

fluid pudding- go there.

i want to tell ya'll about meghan!

we met in a christian chat room like.... 5+ years ago and talked all the time when i was in high school. (ah, the days of high school. and chat rooms.) we were internet buddies!

and then came college. i got a christmas card from meghan my freshman year, but by then i'd abandoned the world of chat rooms for the kingdom of instant messenger. she was on my IM list, though we never really talked since i was a freshman.

a week or so ago i was procrastinating and decided to say hi. she's just as cool as ever, and is studying to be a teacher up in the pacific northwest. plus, she started that blog up there the day after i started mine. isn't it neat?

i dont know what i want for christmas. ARG. all i can think of is a wok, and an umbrella that works. (i own three broken umbrellas, none of which i broke myself. and an ugly one with roses all over it.) and that pitiful list sounds like the type of thing my parents ask for for christmas. does anyone know what i should want for christmas??

useless poop i did instead of studying or sleeping:

mm, babysitting.

2 days
4 jobs
5 different children
11 hours
100 dollars

and then sunday, i have to get my rear in gear for studying

this town is rather small, so i often run into students from the various elementary schools i've worked at. for example, tuesday night at Franks (hot dogs) one of the 1st grade boys in the class i'll be student teaching at was there, along with his family.

this makes me nervous, because i have a habit of doing and saying stupid things in public. loudly.

i told my math teacher that i always used to think that orange wooden blocks (like the ones with squares, triangles etc used for math in elementary school) were made of carrots.

she told me that i say the strangest things.

and then tonight she emailed me to ask if i'd take a paid tutor position for the math for elem. teachers class next quarter. (i can't do it though)

free associations

1. Scrooge:: it
   
2. Ribbon:: pink
   
3. Physical:: education
   
4. Income:: cap
   
5. Dream:: journal
   
6. Notebook:: spiral
   
7. Disney:: ears
   
8. Combo:: plate
   
9. Booty:: licious
   
10. Skin::soft
    

for two years, we had this icky air freshner in our apartment bathroom that smelled like berries. it was gross, and it didn't cover up any smells- it just added nasty berryness. i threw it away a few months ago and bought "rain shower" scent, even though the berry one wasn't empty.

we thought we were rid of the evil smell.. but over the last few days carolyn and i had started getting random whiffs of the nastyness in our room. i figured out what it was....

a purple candle carolyn found somewhere! ha. no more berry smell, we have tossed the candle too. you won't win, berry stink!

there is a very faint, hard to see warning on the side of my thing of shaving cream. the warning is printed in a very slightly darker shade of blue than is used on the background of the can. it isn't exactly obvious.

so, the thing says "WARNING may explode if heated" and there is a little picture of what looks like an asteroid coming through the atmosphere with chunks of space debris coming off.

i went through 8 or 9 cans of this stuff before i noticed the warning.

do you really think that the type of person who would decide to put shaving cream in the microwave oven would happen to notice the faintly printed warning? I dont think so.

this is what i think about every time i shower