How to Move Across Two States in 25 Easy Steps!

1. Have your boyfriend discover that the University of Montana is looking for a costumer in their graduate program for the fall (but it has to be discovered at the end of May, and NOT  Feb./March like usual).
2. Decide you actually want to go to Grad school, and have subsequent metal breakdowns and periods of giddiness.
3. Contact your college professor and have her help you put together all your application stuff on the day of your 22nd birthday. IT MUST BE ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!
4. Anxiously submit your materials by the first week of June...and wait...and wait...and wait
5. Be interviewed for Grad school a mere four weeks after you submitted your materials (during these four weeks you must pray fervently each time you enter the bridal shop you do alterations at, that you will be accepted to grad school).
6. Wait another three weeks to hear anything (they told you it would be two weeks, and you must email them timidly asking what is happening, then they will tell you to wait longer)
7. Pray frantically for grad school (or sweet sweet death) each time you deal with another bride who verbally berates you for charging too much (remember you can't work on commission but be paid hourly like a dope)
8. A mere three weeks before classes start (and three and half short weeks after the interview) you must receive your acceptance letter/email
9. Scream/clap to yourself and run out the door to the bakery/cafe your boyfriend works at to tell him the news
10. FREAK OUT!!!!This must be done positively and negatively...you could get mauled by a bear you know, but maybe the bear will be wearing a top hat and monocle and have you for lunch with tea!
11. Tell your boss you are giving your two weeks notice. You must feel morally terrible about it, as she had just told you she would be needing you more due to her very sick husband at home "So, is this a bad time to tell you I got accepted to Grad school and need to give my two weeks notice?" [exact quote]
12. Realize you have to drive 12 hours to a place where you know NOBODY!! AND NOTHING! Assure yourself you can drive 12 hours in one day.
13. Realize you can't drive 12 hours in one day. Book a hotel 8 hours away to push yourself to greater limits! (your positive demeanor assures you a 4 hour day of mountain driving will be a cake walk after 8 hours of boring road)
14. Pack frantically, but only the necessities! You know, only the things you can fit into your Conestoga wagon *cough silver impala cough*
15. Buy "Bossypants" written and read by Tina Fey on audio book (It's like she's in the car with you!)
16. Disrupt your cats daily lives by moving everything around and bringing out the suitcase, a surefire sign of abandonment
17. Have your boyfriend cram your mountain of shit  trail supplies into the impala  wagon.
18. Try not to cry...cry a lot.
19.Drive across the wasteland that is North Dakota (you promised yourself you'd never do that again you lying bastard!)
20. Take 10 hours to get to the over halfway point you thought would only take 8 hours (you forgot about stopping for eating/bathroom/fuel)
21.Be blearily checked into the hotel by a friendly, mustachioed man at 11pm.
22. Make the final leg of your journey listening to "Bossypants" a second time (It's just like having my very own friend talking to me!)
23. Be greeted in your new town by a man named Dave (a Dustin Hoffman look-a-like) who is showing you an apartment (I may have set this up beforehand...or Dave is just magical and my life is just a sea of random people wanting to help me)
24. Find the house of your friend's boyfriend's friends where you've been promised a room to stay.
25. Have a cat named Moose welcome you with open paws.

If you follow this 25 step plan you, too, can move across two states!

The Sun Also Rises (or) Everyone Gets Drunk and Watches a Bull Fight

Minnie and Ajax

     First of all I'd like to start this post off by apologizing (again) for not posting for months. It wasn't that I was really busy, I was just going through my typical Winter existential crisis. I also had to move, adopted two wonderful kittens, got a new job, and turned 22. My new job is something I'll be writing about one Quintus whom I wrote about a while ago, well I had to find him a new home. He was a bit of an escape artist and he ran away one night. I was heartbroken, but relieved when he came back two weeks later. I found him a new home where he gets all the love he can handle from all the playmates he could ever want. Now that you're all caught up, let us dive together into Ernest Hemingway's "Everyone Gets Drunk and Watches a Bull Fight".
     Now were you to look this book up and get the scholarly take on it, they would tell you it's an important novel of a group of expatriates during the time of the "lost generation". The lost generation (a term

Hemingway's Pals

Hemingway himself popularized) are those who were coming of age during/after WWI. This was something Hemingway knew about as he was a part of the lost generation, and he was also an expatriate who liked to hang out with a group other expatriates (made any connections yet?). Now that we've taken a brief tour of a small portion of the background information, let's dive into the story.
     The main character is Jake Barnes who is a journalist in Paris, he has a series of friends who like to pop up occasionally and talk about everything and nothing. The book is from Jake's point of view and he really doesn't seem to give a flying fart in space what is happening around him. It's all pretty mild until Lady Brett Ashley shows up. See, Jake is in love with Brett and she's pretty stoked about him but, as there always is, something isn't right between them. It takes a while in the book to get to the point, but Jake was in an accident during the war and is ,consequently, impotent. Hemingway goes all clever about it and slips in a part about the steers from the Spanish bull fights and we all clap, give our oohs and aahs and are amazed at his wit (but really it is pretty witty). Anywho, Lady Ashley simply can't get over the fact that Jake is impotent and Jake doesn't feel like a full man and blah, blah, blah. So he must watch Lady Ashley parade by him with a different man every few months or so.
     Never fear Jake's life isn't all boring, he likes bull fights! I'm sorry, he doesn't like them he LOVES them. He takes his rag-tag group of lost generationers with to Spain to watch the bull fights and he just goes crazy over it all. Jake is basically the only one who can speak Spanish and this combined with his love of bull-fighting endears him to the people of the town. Now at this point it has been well established that Jake and his friends are most excellent at getting tight (drunk) on a regular basis. Even Lady Ashley has been trashed out of her mind yelling loudly in a hotel lobby. Jake usually keeps his shit together, probably because he has to watch out for the reader so they can continue to comprehend his thoughts. After several pages of some exciting bull fighting descriptions, Lady Ashley decides(most likely drunkenly) that she must get the young bull fighter Romero for her own. Never-mind that she'd had recent relationships (probably mostly relations, because that's all that seems to matter to her) with two of the men who are with the group. For some reason no one (not even the townspeople) are too excited about Lady Ashley getting with a 19 year old, so the two run off together. Jake's left with a friend who stabbed him in the back by getting with Lady Ashley (but let's be real who hasn't), and the fiancee that she decided to leave behind.
     Only a matter of days pass when Jake receives a telegram from Lady Ashley saying she has left the young bull fighter because she didn't want to ruin his career (too late you harlot!). Jake has to come to the rescue and let Lady Brett Ashley cry upon his shoulder. In the end she decides to go back to her fiancee, a secure choice for her since Jake is impotent and all. Brett tells Jake that she believes they could have had a wonderful life together and then Jake tells her "Yet, isn't that pretty to think so?". And that's it, that's all he says to her.
     At this point you maybe thinking to yourself what in the hell is this book about, well I already told you! It's the lost generation! Nothing has to make sense as long as we've got alcohol and aren't in America but are

Ernest, at his finest

American's! Oh, and we have got to have those bullfights in there! I didn't really touch on the antisemitism that comes up with the character of Robert Cohn (the best friend of Jake's that slept with Brett), because it's deep and meaningful and exhausting. Hemingway was just writing about what was happening around him, and it makes for a good read. I would recommend it but only if you don't mind reading about everyone having a damn drink in their hand on every damn page. You'd think after a while it would just be implied that they're all drinking like fish, but Hemingway makes double sure.

Butter, Batter, Burn (An Alliterative Adventure in Scandinavian Treats)

     Yes, it has been almost two months since I updated the blog. So (Mom and Dad) I'm sorry it took me forever. I was actually pretty busy in December, since I graduated college and all(please feel free to send money)! And then there was celebrating Christmas and New Years, and a mad search to find some sort of job. While these are all wonderful excuses, the fact remains that I have quite a bit of time on my hands lately. The funny thing about graduating is you don't have homework constantly harassing you, which is fabulous. It also leaves you to make up your own goals and that can be a good thing, or it could just turn into a string of wonderful afternoon naps. But I'm straying from the topic I want to address, and that ,dear readers, is krumkake.

The sacred text

This is what shame looks like

     For those of you who don't have Norwegian immigrants in your family history, you're probably wondering what the heck is krumkake. Well, friends, it's basically like an ice cream cone but tastier and prettier. You make in on a krumkake iron and then you quickly roll it onto wooden cone to give it shape. If you wait too long your krumkake will break and you'll be left with the pieces of a pretty cookie. It still tastes the same, but your Scandinavian shame will rise within you and tell you that you failed miserably and that your ancestors are seriously disappointed in you. If you manage to please those Norwegians of long ago, you do it at the expense of your fingertips. And since Norwegians are not a community to shy away from things that cause pain, rolling krumkake onto the cone will burn the ever-loving-daylights out of your fingertips.

Pain for perfection's sake

     Before I go into the excruciating pain that comes with this Norse treat, I need to explain that there is a LOT of butter in the batter. Oh, and you need a good strong Scandinavian cookbook to work out of, preferably one that is from your grandmother's house and spells it Kokebok instead of cookbook. After you've mixed up the batter from the mystical tome, you take a spoonful and place it on the krumkake iron, where it proceeds to flatten out, all while shooting butter out the sides of the iron. The iron starts crackling and hissing, and if you stand too close it will spit butter on you...and it will hurt. Once the hissing and spitting calms down it's time to take that beautiful, patterned, golden brown cookie off the iron.

A perfect specimen

     This is where the pain begins, and it doesn't stop until the last krumkake has been rolled. Having pulled off the flattened cake you have to use your fingers to roll it on the cone. Now I did mention there is a lot of butter in the batter, and this is when it starts to burn (Oh my gosh I mentioned the title words in the post!You can drink to that if you'd like...I don't mind). Your fingertips scream in agony as the hot butter strips away any fingerprint you may have once had. There is nothing wrong with leaving krumkake in a flat pancake shape, but if you prefer not to anger the ancestors AND the gods of Norse mythology you suck it up and burn those fingertips right off and you thank Thor for letting you do this sacred work. You have to work quickly because those little cookies harden up into a non pliable Frisbee in no time flat. After roughly 30 minutes to an hour of burning away your fingers, you'll have a beautiful army of rolled cones gazing lovingly up at you, waiting for their chance to be devoured.

An army of krumkake

      Holding the sacred krumkake in your heavily bandaged hands you look skyward and know that on this day, the ancestors are well pleased with your work. You take a big bite and the rolled cone quickly breaks and cascades down your chest onto the floor. Unable to pick the pieces off the floor due to your injured fingers, you offer it up as a sacrifice to all those who have rolled before you, and for those who will continue to roll long after you're gone.