Week 2 Reading Diary, continued: The Gospel of Mark

("The Denial of St. Peter" by Gerard van Honthorst via Wikipedia)

There's also lots of material to use here--I'm going to have lots of stuff to choose from. Here's a few of the ideas that really popped out at me:

Blind Bartimaeus: I've also always liked this story, so like the story of the loaves and fishes earlier it would be cool to move it to another time and place.

Jesus in the Temple: there's lots of potential for action and drama in this scene, and I feel like it could be illustrated really vividly. That said, there is also the scene where the scribes hear of what Jesus has done in the temple. I was thinking that it would be cool to have one of their servants, maybe, eavesdropping on the conversation?

Peter Denies Jesus: this one has really eerie imagery, with the cock crowing--plus there's a lot of dramatic tension, and Peter's probably feeling a lot of conflicted emotions, which might be interesting to portray. The line "Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another," or maybe the one about the cutting off of hands/feet/etc. might serve as guidance points for Peter's thoughts as the realization dawns on him that he's gone and denied Jesus three times, even though he swore he would never do so. It might also be interesting to write the story from the point of view of the woman trying to condemn him.

The Laying of Jesus to Rest/The Angel at the Cave Mouth/Jesus Comes to Mary Magdalene Early in the Week: there's (comparatively) a lot that could be done with the women's perspectives in this kind of a story--there's a lot of grief and reflection and awe packed into these scenes, but there would also be, say, the physical act of sealing Jesus in the cave, or speaking with the Angel, or seeing Jesus and trying to tell people, to drive the plot and/or emotional atmosphere. Plus, women in the Bible don't often get stories written in their perspective, in my experience...

Source: The Gospel of Mark, from The King James Bible (1611) via The UnTextbook.

Week Two Reading Diary: The Gospel of Mark

(Mosaic of loaves and fishes at Tabgha via Wikipedia)

There's lots of cool opportunities for stories in this unit! Here's some things that really jumped out at me for story potential--or even just as things to potentially include in a story:

John the Baptist/The Beheading of John the Baptist: there's a lot of potential in here for a story about either John the Baptist himself (the story from his point of view? Or from someone he's baptized? Or it says he has followers...) or about, for example, a story about the daughter of Herodias, who I feel could maybe have a lot of backstory, or even future-story, about coming to terms with the fact that she's just asked for a man's head.

The Healings: there's a lot, and they each involve different characters with different motivations. It's possible to do a close up on just one of the healings, and maybe tell the story from the point of view of a bystander? Or the person that's asking Jesus to do one of these healings?

The boat and parables: that part where the narrative states that Jesus never talks to his disciples except to tell them parables struck me as rife for humor, if I wanted to do that kind of a story.

The Loaves and the Fishes: I've always really liked this story--I feel like setting it in another time and place would put a fresh spin on the narrative.

"They laid the sick in the streets." This is a really powerful image. Of course, what immediately came to mind was the many opportunities for gruesome description. I feel like it would be interesting to tell a story from the point of view of an undertaker, or maybe a person of medicine who's working in the city--or even one of the scribes or the Pharisees. Their natural disgust at what Jesus is doing would work really well as a counterpoint to all of the sickness everywhere, I think.

"Verily I say unto you." Starts pretty much every section--this could be used as a narrative device...

Source: The Gospel of Mark, from the King James Bible (1611) via The UnTextbook.

Learning Challenges and Failing Less

In my opinion, it's really hard to separate out one kind of learning from another, when it comes down to it. Life is horribly messy, and all of its parts are invariably intertwined--each affects the others. It's become more and more clear to me, as I move forward through college (and life outside of college, as mythical as that sounds sometimes), that the reason I feel like I've had a lobotomy at the end of every semester is because I've not only learned the subject material provided to me to the best of my ability--I've also readjusted all the knowledge I had before the semester. I've filled in gaps, or (hopefully) corrected inconsistencies, or even smashed a couple paradoxes together into a dubious-looking lump. But knowledge isn't limited to what you learn in school; it's the sum of everything you've ever experienced. So the headache I have is really the result of me revamping my entire perspective on life, the universe, and everything--all in the space of sixteen weeks. It's like an extreme renovation project, where at the end I have a house that may be vaguely familiar but may also look nothing like when I started. It may have the same layout and foundation, or it may not. It may have more doors and windows, or it may have less. It really depended on what that semester was like.

This is a really roundabout way of me explaining that I don't really think about--or conduct--learning in the categorized terms of the HEART model. But I'll try to parse things out a bit.

Firstly, we'll talk about the things I'm bad at. It would come as no surprise to anyone who knows me on a more than hey-I-know-your-face basis if I said that time management is not one of my strongest skills. In fact, I will come right out and say that I suck at it. But I'm slightly less awful, this semester, than I have been in past semesters--and I hope to get even better by the end.

When I procrastinate, I've discovered, I'm really just listening to the fears in my head, telling me that things will go wrong, or that I'll suck at something, or that doing the thing I want to do really won't be as good as it sounded in my head. Now, I know these fears aren't logical--and there are actually very logical statements that I can repeat to myself that help me dismantle these doubts completely. In fact, I've been repeating them to myself nonstop for the past week, to great effect. My favorite of these statements (or questions, really) is So what if things go wrong? You can fix wrong, followed closely by Will you ever know if you don't try?No, of course not, and What could you be doing right now if you'd allotted more time to work instead of worry, and finished earlier?

I try not to ask that last question too often, though, because the answer is usually Well, dishes, or More schoolwork--or, my favorite, Calling so-and-so about *insert boring, routine reason for phone call here*. Because I've usually been procrastinating about the phone call, too!

Of course, I've also put quite a lot of work into others of these categories. For instance, I'm great at reading. I read when I'm happy, when I'm sad, and whenever and wherever there is reading material available. No written text is safe: watch out, ingredients lists! Beware, doctor's office pamphlets! Run, poem I stumbled across online!

Ahem. It's good to have variety.

But I can't talk about reading without also talking about empathy. Because the best kind of reading happens when the words get absorbed into your blood and bones and you carry them around with you for the rest of your life. It happens when you come across new ideas, and new people, and new places. Because once you've read something, you can't un-read it. It's with you forever. And you can take those new ideas and people and places that you didn't have before and use them to interpret the world around you. When you empathize with a person, you are, in a way, deciphering their own personal language (spoken and unspoken). How can you do that if you have no experience grasping ideas you've never seen before? Or putting yourself into another person's head, full of their failures and triumphs; their hopes and dreams? Reading is an amazing way to teach yourself these things, and I try to indulge in the meaty, question-raising kind of reading at least once a day, to keep myself sharp. To keep myself thinking about what people besides myself might be feeling. I'm not saying that empathy doesn't seem like an impossible task, sometimes, because still fail--often. But reading helps me fail less.

And I still fail less at empathy than I do at time management. So I'm working on that.

We'll leave this post on a Gandalf note, shall we?

(Learning Challenges as explained by Gandalf. Quote: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." By Eugenio Hansen, via Wikipedia Commons)

Growth Mindset, AKA Self-Imposed Ruthlessness

I've started this post at least five times, and I still can't figure out how to talk about growth mindset, and what it means to me. How to accurately convey the role it holds in my life. How to succinctly explain how I came to the sudden, world-changing conclusion, when I was seventeen, that the most dangerous people are the ones that stretch their limits every day, because they realize that there is no ceiling to the things they can do. Because it isn't a short kind of thing. It's a long-winded, all-encompassing kind of thing. I would have to tell you my life story, and way more about myself than I'm comfortable sharing on the internet.

So I guess I'll just tell you it's important to me, and point you in the direction of some awesome stuff, with some explanations as to how I came to find it?

Thing #1: I used to be a competitive gymnast. For a long time, I thought I was a bad gymnast, because I didn't pick up skills as fast as the other girls, I didn't like competing, I was afraid of trying anything new--the list goes on and on. My coach planted the first seeds of my current understanding of "skill" within me when he gave me this book, which is now most tragically out of print. It's a brilliant, brilliant book. It banned the word "can't" from my vocabulary altogether. We had lots of sayings at my gym: "'can't' is a four-letter word", "the moment you think you can't, you can't", etc.--except my coach was the only one allowed to say them, because every time we gymnasts said the word "can't"--even jokingly--we were assigned fifty push-ups, on the principle that literally the only thing that could possibly stop us from doing a skill was our physical strength. You could always get stronger; you just had to work at it. Getting in the way of yourself wasn't an option; if you were afraid of something, that meant you were obligated to master it.

Yeah, it was a kind of ruthless thing to do to a bunch of preteen girls. But that was how my life was structured, and it affected everything: not just my gymnastics, but my schoolwork, and my relationships, and even how I learned to drive. It was still a structure that was imposed by somebody else, though, and when I was forced to quit gymnastics due to too many injuries (a condition brought on by the fact that I was no longer afraid to try new skills, sometimes with reckless abandon) I had to learn how to impose that mindset on myself. Which lead to...

Thing #2: Enter Maggie Stiefvater, my hero: her ability to do anything, plus her wonderful online presence, ensured that I was never at a loss for inspiration when it came to stretching my limits. I have no idea if she's even heard of Carol Dweck or not, but her philosophy of life is very, very similar to growth mindset: see her early butt-kicking posts on Blogger or the #dubiouslifeadvice tag on her Tumblr for proof. Warning: she sometimes curses. A lot.

(Shameless plug: she writes awesome books, too but I'm sure I've mentioned that before...)

So, onto my goals for the semester, now that we've established I'm really a Growth Mindset Junkie. Let's pick three?
1) I'm taking a lot of classes. Most of them are far above my current levels, and offered in formats I've never seen before. My goal? Work on my time management (due to necessity). Work on my ability to "roll with the changes", as our good friends in REO Speedwagon once put it. Get A's that reflect the effort I put in, and how well I achieved my goals.
2) I've got a job for the semester. I've never had this before. The idea of juggling school and work is terrifying, because I've never done it before. But like a good little ex-gymnast, I'm running straight towards the source of my fear. My goal? Learn to juggle priorities. This is a hurtful task, because I like to be good at everything, and inevitably some priorities tend to overshadow others.
3) There's a lot of writing in this course, and it's fiction writing. My goal? Write more than I ever have before. Explore new writing styles and concepts. And enjoy what I'm writing, because I suck at actually enjoying life during the semester.

And let's leave it on a high note, shall we?

(Proper explanation of bad villainy via Maggie Stiefvater. Copyright 2009)

Storybook Favorites

So I have to confess that these Storybooks aren't my favorites, since that word implies that I read all the Storybooks. But they were my favorites out of the ones that I read, and I was really impressed by the ingenuity and creativity shown by all three authors in creating their themes and stories.

(Touching the Skye)

I was interested in Touching the Skye because of its title--my brain immediately jumped to Skye, Scotland, so the title did really well at hinting at the Storybook's topic--and then once I clicked over I got caught up in the story! I love folklore about the various water-fairies (or any kind of fairies, really) so it was a nice surprise to find so much of it here, and the Introduction was really compelling and original, even if it didn't hint so much at the folklore part of the story, so I wanted to keep reading even before I knew there were fairies! Plus the pictures are beautiful (did you hear my sigh? I just sighed), and I like how the layout really lays all the focus on the story, making it front and center, and leaves no distractions for the reader. That's certainly something I'll keep in mind for my own Storybook.

Maggie's Heptameron also caught my eye because of its title (note to self: think of a catchy title), because I was so interested in the unit on the Decameron earlier. I liked how the layout is divided into the different pages of a book, making it seem more like an actual manuscript. And the pictures are all really apropos for the stories, and relevant to the times! The twist in the story is really interesting--an undercover noble in the kitchens, bored with her high station, eavesdropping and finding out many things about the household she wouldn't know otherwise. I'm always getting into trouble because of eavesdropping and prying into people's lives, and I, too, find that when life gets too predictable I have to shake it up a bit, so I could relate...

(Image of a hotel foyer, from 3D House-Hotel)

Last, but certainly not least, I found Hero Visa Pending hilarious. I'm always interested in the ways that various people portray Hades (both the place and the god), and the idea that the afterlife involves a bureaucracy (hell is paperwork, I don't care what else anyone says, especially the finicky stuff!) is just spot on. All the rest of the worldbuilding is great, and I really liked the poem at the beginning--and the names of the stories themselves--and it's all set up really, really well in the introduction. I also noticed that the colors of all the pictures worked really well with the background--I've been working with that in my own blogging, as well, because I've noticed that if a picture has colors that don't work with the background I get thrown out of whatever I'm reading, and it takes me a moment to recover, which obviously isn't ideal for any reader.

These are some examples that really caught my eye, but I found a lot of other good ideas about what I want to do--and what I don't want to do--from clicking through a lot of other Storybooks on my way to these. I'm excited to start the project, now!

Course Overview: Choices, Choices...

("6th Century Icon", via Wikipedia Commons)

You may have guessed by the image that I've chosen The Gospel of St. Mark for my Week 2 reading. This is partly because I have never actually read the entire New Testament (I know, it's a shocker) but have always wanted to, but I have read part of this gospel, and was very intrigued. It's also--in very small part--because I've been reading Classical myths nonstop since I was a wee bairn, and it would be boring and predictable of me to choose something I've covered so (comparatively) thoroughly when it's one of my goals in this class to branch out and read a lot of stuff I've never read before.

So that's my choice for next week, but having poked around quite a bit in the course, I have come to the conclusion that I'll just have to do a lot of extra credit reading. Everything looks interesting! However, I did find a find units that really jumped out at me, and here they are:

The Mabinogion: Welsh myth has inspired some of my favorite books--The Raven Cycle, The Dark is Rising series, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the Prydain series--but I haven't read enough of the original stuff to know when something's being made up by an author vs. when they're referencing something. It would be awesome, since these books have influenced my life so much, to be able to bring some of these myths into my own storytelling.

British North America: my major is anthropology, so I come into contact with a lot of Native American stuff on a daily basis. Being from the Northeast, however, where Native American cultures are not nearly as spotlighted as they are here in the Midwest, I find myself at a loss when it comes to the mythology of Native Americans, especially those from the Northeast. Which is very sad. I have read stuff here and there, but I'm always looking to branch out! I can't think of any connections to movies/TV/books here--but that probably means that I haven't been actively looking for them in the past few years.

The Decameron, by Boccaccio: I really, really love medieval legends and lore. Like, I could read them forever. I've read The Canterbury Tales, and I think that this would be an interesting compare-and-contrast read for that book, since there's a similar format to the storytelling but (judging from the description in the UnTextbook) very different subject matter involved. Also, I'm in the Medieval Fair Cast this year and our fair takes place around 1370, which is just around the time that this piece takes place in.

And that's it for now--I could probably write a description about why I'm interested in all the units--but time doesn't permit...

Introduction to a (Slightly) Stressed Philomath

Hello everyone! My name is Kathryn, and I am writing this post from the comfort of my armchair (which was featured in one of previous posts as one of my favorite places of all time only slightly facetiously. I love this chair), with a cup of tea in my hand and my hair standing on end from all the work that has descended upon me. It's only the first week of the semester! I think to myself. How could you already be so far underwater?

The truth is, I take a lot of classes because I'm interested in everything--but I'm still working on my time management skills. My major is anthropology (I'm actually double majoring in anthropology and linguistics, but the linguistics part is complicated). I knew it was going to be anthropology or nothing before I got to college. But I also really like writing--which is really why I was drawn to this class in the first place. Writing about myths and folk tales is a serious plus, because that's what I end up doing a lot anyway! I love to read mythology and folklore, and I don't get to do it enough. Plus I've always wanted to have a blog, but it was never really an option, time-wise. Also my life is kind of boring, day by day, which is what people generally blog about.

What do I do? I take a lot of classes during the semester. Sometimes I get in time for personal reading, but mostly I just flail uselessly under piles of assigned reading. I write essays (not stories so much, lately, but hopefully that'll change this semester). I procrastinate doing adult things like calling the bank and cleaning my room. And, last but not least, I memorize ridiculous amount of Arabic vocabulary. During breaks, I travel back to the Northeast, where my roots are, and do a lot of taekwondo and try to make money. Sometimes I sleep, but mostly I just kind of imagine how lucid I'd be if I DID sleep. I drink a lot of coffee. I cook (delicious!) food.

Not exactly riveting stuff. But this past break was pretty cool: in addition to taking the ground test for my private pilot's license (one of my goals for far, far in the future is to be able to fly places myself), I tested for my black belt in taekwondo. And, you know, got it. Which was awesome.

I also got to hug my dog a lot, which is always a huge plus. He's a mutt (part hound, but that's the only part we know) and his name is George--short for King George, because he's a bit spoiled and likes to cause trouble. Here's a picture:

(George, photo credit mine)

But that moment doesn't really encapsulate his personality, so here's another, slightly blurry photo, in which he demonstrates the fact that he really thinks he's a cat:

(King George the Household Tyrant, photo credit mine)

What else can I tell you? My favorite authors are Maggie Stiefvater (she is the bees' knees, people), Robin McKinley, and Diana Wynne Jones, but I'll read anything once. I'll also watch anything once, but my favorite movies are The Mummy and Contact. My taste in music is questionable, but I live attached to my headphones. I really like the color orange, and Wonder Woman, and homemade Indian food. If left to my own devices, with no responsibilities, I would probably become either a trapeze artist or a baker; instead, I will probably become an archaeologist/writer/Taekwondo Master, because I have a hard time choosing concrete paths in life.

Phew. I think that's enough of an introduction for now...

ETA: in case you didn't believe me about my taste in music, here's a few songs to illustrate:

Week 1 Storytelling: St. Ives

(Statue of Ancient Egyptian cat at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, via Wikipedia. Redistributed under the terms of the CeCILL.

I would have stopped and bartered with the merchant, but I did not, in fact, like the look of him. His eyes glinted like coins, and his teeth flashed like knives, lining a cavernous smile. His wives outnumbered him seven to one, every one of them mounted, veiled, and trailed by seven more camels dripping with jewels, a large, gilded sack draped gracefully over each hump. Altogether, the effect was quite impressive—although, I thought, in a quiet, private part of my mind, he’ll draw thieves like a watering hole draws lions.

I did not hail him, did not stop. Instead, he hailed me.

“Young fellow!” he cried, as the ranks of his company came rippling to a halt behind him. “Young fellow, whatever your heart desires—I have it!”

My eyes came to rest dubiously on the wives. Their eyes came to rest dubiously on me, gazes sumptuous under their many-colored veils. The camels glowered at me through long lashes. I had the strangest feeling that the sacks were watching me also, but no doubt it was just my discomfort with the merchant spreading to his entourage, like one fruit spreading its rot to the others in the barrel.

My doubt as to the attractiveness of his wares must have shown in my eyes, because he was still speaking. “Perhaps a comb?” he asked. “Or a glass flower, for the lady that walks your dreams? A scarf—of the finest silk? Or a coat?” He gestured to his own, the linen stiff with lurid embroidery. “Anything, my good fellow—anything! May I ask where Your Most Noble Self is going? Are there no others in your party?”

“I travel to the Holy City,” I said, casting down my eyes. It was the barest gesture of respect, but I didn’t trust him out of my sight for longer. “And there are no others—only myself.”

He exclaimed in wonder. “A pilgrim! Then would Your Most Devout Self desire a camel? It is some ways to the Holy City, and a long walk for only two feet. I know—I left through its high gates no less than five days hence, and have traveled at full speed to reach here."

“I desire nothing, Most Salubrious Sir,” I replied. “Except, perhaps—may I ask what the sacks on your camels hold? Their contents do not seem to be coats or combs.”

“Ah—“ he said. He paused for a long moment. “The contents of the sacks are not for sale. I am most apologetic. Official business, I’m afraid; instructions from His Holiest. Not for sale. But—“ he licked his lips. “Perhaps you, Most Pious Sir, would like to see? Just for a moment, you understand.”

I wasn’t so sure the sacks didn’t hold the bodies of other Most Pious Sirs, who had similarly been tricked into looking within, but I nodded, fighting the urge to laugh at the merchant, who was trying his best to emanate Official Holiness and Grandiose Generosity yet only managing Vague Discomfort. “It would be an honor,” I managed, with the merest of lip twitches, “to know a secret which otherwise only His Holiest may know.”

“Very well, then. Aminah?” At his gesture, the smallest and brightest of his wives rode forward and dismounted. She met my eyes for a brief second—hers were the same rich brown as a camel’s—and by her gaze, wavering and wary, I knew her to be the youngest as well. Her fingers fumbled with the ties to the sack, and I tried to move unthreateningly as I stepped forward to look over her shoulder, into the mouth of the sack.

Many pairs of eyes gazed back at me, luminous and leery. Some of the cats were sleeping, but most were very alert, and quite angry with their prison: ears twitched and tails thrashed. They were the finest I had ever seen, with bright coats and proud faces, and each attempted to nurse seven kits from its precarious perch within the sack.

“Most fine, are they not?” The merchant’s arm swept into my vision, rings winking in the sunlight. “Bred by His Holiness himself. They are a present.”

A present to whom? I thought. But I took a step backwards as I nodded. “Well then,” I said, softly, tearing my gaze away from sight of Aminah tying up the sack again. “If they are not for sale, I’m afraid none of your wares can tempt me. I wish safe travels to Your Most Generous Self.”

We parted ways, him with his jingling beacon of an entourage and me in my worn clothes, alone. Several miles on, I stopped for the night. As the cool wind of the desert night swept across the sand, I opened my tattered coat and pulled out the furry body I had been cradling close to my breast. Stroking my finger across the soft dome of its head, I leaned down and breathed in the milky, musty scent of its fur. The kit rumbled contentedly in its sleep.

My lips twitched again, and this time I didn’t stifle my smile—holy cats were good luck, and this one had been bred by His Holiness. It also liked me much better than it liked the merchant.

And so not one, but two, traveled to the Holy City.

Author's Note:

This story is (very loosely) based off a nursery rhyme/riddle that goes like this:

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives;
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives.
How many were there going to St. Ives?

I had a lot of questions about these seven lines. For instance: who is the person telling the story? Where is St. Ives? How did the man have seven wives? And how did they put cats in sacks without a lot of complaining?

Turns out, St. Ives is a small seaside town in Cornwall, England. But that didn't make any more sense for the number of wives, so I decided to take some liberties with the setting of the story: mine takes place in a kind of "fairy tale" version of the Middle East that many fairy tales/nursery rhymes from the 1800s take place in, which I want to stress is NOT culturally, religiously, linguistically, or geographically accurate. But it is very handy in a pinch. And from there, I knew my viewpoint character--he just kind of appeared as I started writing, complete with wry humor and pick-pocketing skills (although I suppose in this case they could be called kit-pocketing skills?)--and the story began to take shape.

Bibliography:

Author Unknown. (1897) "As I Was Going to St. Ives". The Nursery Rhyme Book. Ed. by Andrew Lang. Via Project Gutenberg.

My Favorite Places

This post, as most indiscreetly hinted in the title, will be about some of my favorite places. I have many more than three--but I'm limiting myself! So, without further ado, some of the places that have captured my heart:

("King Neptune, Virginia Beach" by Missy Schmidt via Flickr)

When my family and I visited Virginia Beach for the first time, I was 14. I fell in love instantly--not just with the beach, but with the atmosphere of the town, and the boardwalk, and even the hotel we stayed at. I love the breeze that blows at night, and the mist that rolls in off the ocean, and the sunrise, and even the thunderstorms. It's a beautiful, beautiful place, and my family and I have gone back almost every year since then. I once saw a Carbon Leaf concert in front of this statue. Like I said, good stuff.

A caveat however: don't go during full tourist season. Anytime during mid-April to mid-May the beach is still beautiful (and quite warm, by my standards, but I'm from the Northeast), but lacks the crowds that come streaming in during the summer.

Next is a place much closer to home; it's the place where all my family is from and where I grew up half the time. I'm talking about Vergennes, VT--a city which boasted the title "Smallest City in the USA" for a long, long time, before losing its claim to fame a few years ago. One of my favorite things to do there (besides hang around with various relatives) is walk around downtown, where you can see Vermont's tourist industry with its best, most cow-themed foot forward. My absolute favorite place to visit, though, is the library, which is old and posh and frighteningly historical:

("Bixby Library" by Gopats92 - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikipedia Commons)

Beautiful, isn't it? There's a dome. And statues. And an archaeological exhibit upstairs.

And last--but not least--is my favorite place in Oklahoma. It is where I look forward to spending my days, drinking coffee/tea, eating muffins, and reading (we'll pretend most of it's nice, relaxed reading for pleasure instead of frenzied reading for classes. Hey, a girl can dream, right?). It's my semester's first hello and last goodbye. It's the chocolate to my peanut butter, the creamer to my coffee, and the Boomer to my Sooner:

(Armchair at the University of Oklahoma; photo credit to Kathryn Jerome, January 2016)

And that's all for now, folks :)

Comment Wall

(Picture taken out the plane window; photo credit mine)

Hi--my name is Kat (thus the title of the blog), and comments go here!

Also, in case you want some music to listen to while you type (or you want to watch a gorgeous music video), here's one of my favorite atmospheric songs. It's off of Agnes Obel's first album Philharmonics, but everything she releases is amazing and The Curse is another one by her that has both awesome song and video...

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