on forts of epicness

Well, friends, I have four pages I should be adding to my term paper right now, so you know what that means: time to update the blog.

Are we three weeks into April already?  Yikes.  I guess that means we'll have to backtrack a bit!

 For those of you who aren't familiar with the LDS General Conference (yes I did just link Wikipedia thank you very much but here is the legit source), it's a broadcast held on the first weekends of April and October and it is awesome.  So awesome that living room blanket forts for the Saturday morning session are completely justified and almost mandatory.

Yes, Ricky and I are super cool.

(The whole tent idea came from when I lived in the Basement--Jules, Lizbeth and I were planning a camping trip and did a dry run with the tent in the backyard over General Conference weekend.  One of the neighbors noticed and told our landlord that we must've confused General Conference with King Benjamin's address.  LDS humor!)

The night before, I took Ricky to his very first hockey game at the Florida Everblades stadium.  I heard on the radio that they were playing the Charleston Stingrays--the team whose games my family used to go see on military nights--and I couldn't pass up the chance to see a bit of my childhood!  

The Everblades put on a good show, but the Stingrays won by a single point.  My loyalties were divided, obviously, but I was definitely entertained by the three burly men across the stadium--the only Stingrays supporters there--who would jump up and down and yell every time the Stingrays scored.  Did I mention hockey is my favorite sport to watch?

In more recent news, Ricky and I are almost done with our respective first years of graduate school!!  I have a paper to turn in and a final to ace, and Ricky has week and a half left of class before a grueling week of finals.  I still can't believe we're so close, but I'm surely not complaining.  I'm so ready for the summer and the beach and Disney annual passes.  (YES.  DISNEY.)

Also, speaking of graduate school, I have another story for you.  Second-year graduate students have the opportunity to apply for teaching assistantships, wherein they teach a few classes of freshman composition and get a tuition waiver for their graduate courses.  I was interested, but was told by my composition pedagogy instructor that I couldn't be a TA with a full-time job--major bummer!--and I dropped the issue.  Imagine my surprise when I get an email this week from the head of the English program, explaining that she heard about my situation and wanted to know if I would accept a partial TAship (teaching one evening class and having tuition for one of my classes waived) instead!  When I told her that would be perfect, she said that she would go ahead and tell the registrar I would be teaching the Thursday night class.  I wasn't sure what to do at that point, because students interested in a TA position are supposed to fill out an application and submit a sample syllabus and I hadn't done any of that.  I still haven't figured it out, mainly because it hasn't sunk in yet that this is seriously happening.  I AM TEACHING A CLASS OF COLLEGE FRESHMAN. (Edit: It is incredibly embarrassing that I misspelled "freshmen"--in all caps, no less--while freaking out about teaching a class on the basics of writing and grammar.  Really, Katie?)  I keep coming up with these lesson plan ideas and running into Ricky's study (a.k.a. the second bedroom) to blather on about them.  I'm hoping that we'll somehow magically end up back in Buena Vista after I graduate and someone will let me teach at SVU.  (Please?)

I also got the Mysterious Benedict Society box set for free using my Borders Bucks!

If you haven't read this set, you're missing out--especially if you like Harry Potter.  They're clever and well-written and leave you wanting the fourth book to be released tomorrow.  The gorgeous cover artwork should be an indication of the quality here.  (Yes, I am a book-cover-judger.)  I've been on a huge children's lit. kick this year, and this series is my favorite so far.  A Series of Unfortunate Events is a (very) close second.

I'll leave you with this.  Are those butterbeer cupcakes?  Yes.  Yes they are.