Current mood:	refreshed
Current music:	OneRepublic - Apologize

Kalamazoo Tea Party

Crumpets and jam. YUM.

Josh is the man for kindly making us piping hot crumpets to go with our tea for this week's meeting. The way Josh and Sara cook make me want to give up my communications grad program and join the environmental studies dept. instead. Then I can write a grant and live at the Gibb's House. Anyway as usual with anything jammy (blackberry this time) I somehow got sticky up to my elbows.

Note: Josh didn't have crumpet rings so he used metal canning bands instead.

Kourtney and Pat picked me up at 6:40 p.m. for today's tea party, hosted this week by the aforementioned Gibb's House. It was raining even heavier when we got done at 8:30 p.m. so she dropped me straight back home. My bike is still out there at the Bernhard Center bike racks in the pouring rain, and I hope to God this time I remembered to lock it properly.

During tea Travis brought up his latest two pound purchase of yerba mate, and the general consensus seemed to be that the brew is like coffee, only without the jitters and makes a person very playful. This spun the next gathering's theme of Yerba Mate Fort Building Tea Party for which I hope to do my part by collecting many many big cardboard boxes.

I was glad for tea today because I made the decision at 6 p.m. to defer grad school to next semester. I feel that with some work experience under my belt, I have a better chance of getting a grad assistantship next time, and I don't want to waste my student work permit anyway.

Morning started out with getting the official line on the dining international student employment policy for the school paper. Even though I hear different things from students, I can't print what they tell me because nobody wants to go on record and jeopardize their jobs. But at least I got a confirmation that students who fit into available time slots can start work immediately while waiting for their social security numbers to arrive.

Had a talk with Mum after that about grad school. Family convo is always exhausting for me because while I inherited my Dad's "fine, I won't talk..." defence technique, my sisters got my Mum's "fighting spirit HIYAH!" combat mode. Phone calls usually involve shouting (at me) for a good half an hour before decent conversation follows. Family talk is good in the mornings when I've had breakfast. Then I just feel all mellowed out and soft like putty for the whole day after being worked over by my family.

Saw Jyrki later in lab, and was surprised by Joe while I was heading towards the ISSA. Sometimes I forget that its possible to have a normal conversation with Joe without him booming out excitedly over something, and it was very soothing to talk to him today.

Best part of the morning was seeing Dan in Sprau Tower. I do adore his gorgeous bohemian self. We keep talking about hanging out and doing some baking but we haven't had time to plan that yet.