my own oscar contender?

I know it's been a while since my last post, but that was the last real down time I had all month. It's been a nonstop parade of reading, projects, and work since then. And it all culminates at 4 p.m. this Thursday at exactly which point I will begin SPRING BREAK! Though sadly my first spring break in five years will include exactly no drunken beach escapades or wild road trips (not that any of my collegiate spring breaks lived up to the stereotypical antics) I am very much looking forward to sleeping in at my parents' house, eating good food that I don't have to cook and introducing Vahan to my California life. Yikes.

As if that wasn't enough to worry about, I've spent the last two weeks getting to know the finer points of iMovie and enjoying the closet-like confines of the video editing rooms at the Georgetown library all in the name of my very first digital story, or, as my professor calls it: A cultural identity narrative. I decided to focus my project on South Africa and combined text from J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace, the South African film "Tsotsi," and music from that film to pull together a narrative exploring South Africa's culture of violence in the post-apartheid state.

But really, none of that is as cool as the fact that I just made a 9-minute movie!

(An addendum: I was never able to properly upload the movie to YouTube. If I ever get it figured out, I'll add it in a new post.)

As if all that weren't enough, we were doused with snow again yesterday. As much as I've enjoyed this new-fangled season called winter, the inner Californian I so desperately try to suppress is now officially ready for the arrival of spring. It's gotten so bad, that I've refused to wear gloves under the doubtful notion that if I don't wear gloves it can't possibly be that cold. Ugh. At this point, I consider 35 tolerable and anything about 45 to be "warm."

California, here I come.

An addendum: The video may not be immediately available as YouTube processing seems to take roughly forever. So much for instant digital gratification.
P.S. #2: Thanks Katy for the inspired idea of making our work available to the world. See, those hours in Gelardin were *NOT* wasted!

cheez whiz

The only mistake I made in Philadelphia this weekend was ordering a cheesesteak with provolone instead of the Cheez Whiz. First off, I was too scared to order myself as the guy taking orders seemed to relish barking at anyone who glanced his way, so I made Vahan order for me. He should've been a man and just changed my order to include the Whiz, but no, he followed my pathetic, marginally health-conscious order and asked for the provolone. It was good, but the Cheez Whiz was infinitely better.

Oh yeah, we went to Philly this weekend.

Vahan surprised me Saturday morning by showing up at my apartment in a white Mustang. We saw the Penn Campus, where Vahan and Ben Franklin discussed the finer points of electricity:

And we went to the Art Museum, where we decided *not* to be one of the dozens of morons running up the steps a la Rocky, but we did opt for this photo with a Rocky-esque statue:

Then we had a fabulous Italian dinner, a nightcap at a nearby cigar bar, and hit up the Italian market and the aforementioned cheesesteaks before calling it a weekend and getting home just in time for me to ignore the Super Bowl and him to cook for all the people watching the Super Bowl at his house.

On an unrelated note: Snow is back and still no snow days. Keeping my fingers crossed for a university AND work shutdown soon!