My Holiday Wish List

I realize that not only is today already Christmas Day, but that the day is almost over. However, since my family isn't actually having our Christmas celebration until my siblings and I all converge on my parents' place at New Year's, this list isn't late after all. In this case, I've decided to bring you my top 5 holiday wish list, counting down to the one thing I want more than anything else for Christmas. So here's hoping....


5.) Northanger Abbey

This is one of my favorite Jane Austen novels, and the 2007 Masterpiece Theater movie version is one of the best film adaptations of an Austen novel that I've seen. Northanger Abbey is less epic than Pride & Prejudice but has its' own brand of romantic sweetness. It's really a spoof of the gothic novel craze at the time, and tends to come off more like a teenager's P & P, I think. I yearn to own this DVD, so I can watch Catherine's silly adolescent daydreams over and over again. She's a girl after my own heart: adorable, imaginative, and completely deserving of her very own happily-ever-after with Mr. Tilney.



4.) Harm None thumb ring

I love this ring from Pyramid Collections. I've always liked thumb rings, and "Harm None" is a motto I can live by.



3.) Gloria Jean's flavored coffees

Usually I try to buy only fair trade organic coffee, but I have a weakness for Gloria Jean's yummy flavored coffees. I think my personal favorite was chocolate caramel, but they're all good. Plus, Gloria Jean's isn't entirely evil, as they are partnered with the Rainforest Alliance in an attempt to improve the lives of coffee growers and conserve the fragile ecosystems where coffee is grown.



2.) Kiva.

I love the idea of Kiva. Random people giving microloans to finance entrepreneurial small-business owners in the third world? How brilliant is that? Microloans are a vital part of stimulating the economies of developing countries, and also help individual, ordinary people at the same time. Sheer genius.



1.) Reality Tour to Afghanistan--courtesy of Global Exchange.

I discovered Global Exchange and their reality tours sometime last year, and became an instant fan. I love to travel, but I've always hated the idea of being a typical "tourist"where you go to a country, see the sights, and then leave without learning anything about the people or what life in that country is really like. I like this idea of "responsible tourism;" where you learn about a major issue affecting a country, region, and/or culture. I've always been the type of traveler that visits museums instead of bars (sadly, unlike most Americans of my age); and I firmly believe that the best way to learn about a place is firsthand from the regular people that live there, instead of tour guides.

Out of all the places they offer tours to, the yearly trip to Afghanistan piqued my interest the most because for most Americans, the only context they have is war, terrorists, and women in bright blue burqas. I like to know things, so I tend to deeply pursue topics that interest me--and even some that don't. I've done a lot of research into Afghanistan and learned enough to know that there is far more to that country and the people that live there than can be summed up in the war/terrorist label. I'm also somewhat fascinated by the culture and the history, and all of the struggles currently taking place there, the least important of which is the one between NATO and the Taliban.

However, as I currently work for minimum wage I only earn about $12,000 a year, and this trip costs about a fourth of my annual income at nearly $3,000 (the program fee plus airfare), it doesn't look like I'll be heading to Afghanistan come March.

Merry Christmas To All, And To All a Good Night!

Happy holidays, everyone! Here are a few timeless and classic Christmas quotes for your holiday cheer. Enjoy!


"Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive."

-Robert Lynd


"Time was with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and everyone round the Christmas fire, and make the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete."

-Charles Dickens


"Christmas is a time when you get homesick -- even when you're home."

-Carol Nelson


And of course, no compilation of Christmas-themed quotes is complete without the well-known and oft-quoted...


Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

'Tis the Season, After All

Christmas at the Radio City Music Hall in NYC.

Christmas is such a great excuse. You can use it to justify all sorts of impulse buys beyond your price range, as I have found out over the past two Christmases.

I bought myself my Christmas present today. I really shouldn't have, as I definitely can't afford it right now, but I couldn't help myself. How often do you run across precisely what you have spent several years been looking for--and it's on sale?

It was meant to be.

I've been trying to find a good weekender bag for quite a while now, even going so far as buying a poor imitation all the while knowing that it wasn't what I wanted just because it was close enough, and I was desperate. Then I was reading one of my new favorite blogs today, La Dolce Vita, and she had a great gift guide posted, including several really cute things from the online store Cerulean. I'd never heard of it before, so I went to the website and it immediately became one of my favorite places to shop, if only from the tagline alone:

"Cerulean--A World of Style Delivered to Your Door."

How great is that? Not to mention that the merchandise is fabulous. Being my usual broke self, I went straight to the "Sale" section and the first thing I saw was this amazing weekender.



The best part is, it's on sale for $93 instead of its usual $124. How can a girl pass that up? This bag appears to be everything I've been scouring the internet and luggage stores for, it's absolutely adorable, and on sale to boot! I had to get it.

So I did. All I can say is: Thank goodness for credit cards :)

Monochrome Monday

Here is my weekly monochromatic offering. It's (big surprise) another image from St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

See more posts by fellow monochrome maniacs here.

The Light In the Dark

More St. Patrick's from NYC.

I'm not at all a religious person--if anything I'm either agnostic or atheist, I haven't quite decided yet. But I love cathedrals. I love the beauty, the peace, and feeling of calm they evoke in me.

There And Back Again

Today's picture is also from New York; it's an amalgam of several billboards up in Times Square.

Today has been an EXTREMELY eventful day! In the midst of this terrible snowstorm that has been menacing the Midwest, but which fortunately mostly missed us here (or the snow, at least did), one of my friends and I had to drive to to a larger city about 45 minutes away to take the GRE this morning. We opted to take my SUV because it has four-wheel-drive and we were worried about the bad weather, so I got stuck driving. Lucky me.

I was already terrified about the test itself; having to worry about whether I was even going to make it there, much less back again, didn't really help. Fortunately we made it safely, took the test, I got decent (if average) scores, and we made it back. All of this despite the fact that when we left here this morning I was driving through whiteout conditions and for the first 15 or 20 minutes couldn't see 5 feet in front of my car. Fun.

And then when we had finally arrived in the city and assumed that we were home free, I somehow managed to hit the one section of ice on a fairly busy street just as I was accelerating and suddenly my car was sliding all over the road. It turned one way, then slid another, we hit and bounced off the curb fairly hard, and then suddenly I was in control again. Whew! That could have been really bad. If there had been a car in the lane next to me we would have collided, because I was definitely turned sideways and sliding down both lanes at a point early in the skid. Then we slid the other way, hit the curb, slid back the first way again, and then were finally straight. It's fortunate I was able to regain control before we hit something more vital than the curb, or or hit it harder and were forced up onto it. Those were a really scary few moments and I was definitely shaking with adrenaline for the next 20 minutes or so.

I've never come so close to having an actual accident before. I mean, I grew up in Iowa--which means that I grew up driving in bad weather and on snow-covered roads--so as a result, fishtailing is not a new experience to me. But that was in a small town with sleepy, quiet roads and it had never been that uncontrolled before. Usually I just slide a little bit and easily correct for it. Here I had absolutely no control, at least for most of it. It didn't help that I had just been accelerating so I was probably going about 40 mph and I was sliding towards an intersection and waiting red light waaaay too fast for my comfort. You know how you're not supposed to touch either of the pedals when you're sliding? Well, I had to use the brakes because we were going too fast and for a second there I had been afraid that we might tip over, so luckily tapping the brakes helped instead of making it worse. That's part of what helped me get my behemoth back under control again; otherwise we might have kept sliding.

Once that little adventure was over we made it safely to the test center. Again, we were extremely lucky because we knew we weren't going to make the 8:30 start time for the test, so we had called to tell them about the bad road conditions and ask what would happen if we didn't make it. Luckily they were nice and were willing to let us start the test late, i.e. whenever we got there, instead of just saying, "too bad, you weren't here on time, you can't take the test so your money is gone," which they could have done. If we hadn't been able to make it today then the fee we paid, a whopping $150 dollars (that neither of us can really afford) would have been gone and we would have had to pay it again to take the test some other day. It's a ridiculous policy and one that led us to risk our lives, or at least my car, by venturing out into today's nasty weather.

I was so worried about the GRE, and then it turned out be a lot easier than I expected. Not easy, certainly; but easi-ER. I did okay on the Verbal section: 660. I had hoped for something a little bit higher, say around 700, mostly to compensate for the abysmal Quantitative score I was anticipating, but I did better on that then I expected with a 370. Still far, far from good or even average, but better than I was expecting and higher than the minimum (300) required for most of the schools I'm interested in. I also beat the minimum for Verbal (600), but not by much--which does have me a little worried. Minimum just isn't good enough with all the competition out there for these spots.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

Arches and Lights

St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, NY.

Rowing Through the Very Heart of It

Amazingly enough, I took this photo in the heart of New York City -- Central Park. It's probably one of my favorite images from the trip, mostly due to the incongruity that lies at the heart of the image as well as the city itself. New York is unlike anywhere I've ever been before.

As my friend who visited with me told me on arrival,

"This is New York. Anything goes."

That is very true, and as a result, contradictions flourish everywhere. And I love contradictions.

Probably because I am one.